Joint Source-Channel Coding with Feedback

This paper quantifies the fundamental limits of variable-length transmission of a general (possibly analog) source over a memoryless channel with noiseless feedback, under a distortion constraint. We consider excess distortion, average distortion, and guaranteed distortion (d-semifaithful codes). In contrast to the asymptotic fundamental limit, a general conclusion is that allowing variable-length codes and feedback leads to a sizable improvement in the fundamental delay-distortion tradeoff. In addition, we investigate the minimum energy required to reproduce k source samples with a given fidelity after transmission over a memoryless Gaussian channel, and we show that the required minimum energy is reduced with feedback and an average (rather than maximal) power constraint.