SummaryIn this article, a new numerical method based on Bernoulli wavelet basis has been applied to give the approximate solution of the fractional optimal control problems. The new operational matrices of multiplication and fractional integration are constructed. The proposed method is applied to reduce the problem to the solution of a system of algebraic equations. The fractional derivative is considered in the Caputo sense. Convergence of the algorithm is proved and some results concerning the error analysis are obtained. Approximate solutions are given and in the cases when we have an exact solution, a comparison with the exact solution is presented to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the proposed method. In addition, we compare the obtained results with the results of other methods. Comparison shows the more accuracy of presented technique in comparison to other published methods.