3 research outputs found
Lossy joint source-channel coding in the finite blocklength regime
This paper finds new tight finite-blocklength bounds for the best achievable
lossy joint source-channel code rate, and demonstrates that joint
source-channel code design brings considerable performance advantage over a
separate one in the non-asymptotic regime. A joint source-channel code maps a
block of source symbols onto a length channel codeword, and the
fidelity of reproduction at the receiver end is measured by the probability
that the distortion exceeds a given threshold . For memoryless
sources and channels, it is demonstrated that the parameters of the best joint
source-channel code must satisfy , where and are the channel capacity and channel
dispersion, respectively; and are the source
rate-distortion and rate-dispersion functions; and is the standard Gaussian
complementary cdf. Symbol-by-symbol (uncoded) transmission is known to achieve
the Shannon limit when the source and channel satisfy a certain probabilistic
matching condition. In this paper we show that even when this condition is not
satisfied, symbol-by-symbol transmission is, in some cases, the best known
strategy in the non-asymptotic regime
Lossless Data Compression at Finite Blocklengths
This paper provides an extensive study of the behavior of the best achievable rate (and other related fundamental limits) in variable-length lossless compression. In the non-asymptotic regime, the fundamental limits of fixed-to-variable lossless compression with and without prefix constraints are shown to be tightly coupled. Several precise, quantitative bounds are derived, connecting the distribution of the optimal codelengths to the source information spectrum, and an exact analysis of the best achievable rate for arbitrary sources is given. Fine asymptotic results are proved for arbitrary (not necessarily prefix) compressors on general mixing sources. Non-asymptotic, explicit Gaussian approximation bounds are established for the best achievable rate on Markov sources. The source dispersion and the source varentropy rate are defined and characterized. Together with the entropy rate, the varentropy rate serves to tightly approximate the fundamental non-asymptotic limits of fixed-to-variable compression for all but very small blocklengths