Joint and tandem source-channel coding with complexity and delay constraints

Two common source-channel coding strategies, joint and tandem, are compared on the basis of distortion versus complexity and distortion versus delay by analyzing specific representatives of each when transmitting analog data samples across a binary symmetric channel. Channel-optimized transform coding is the joint source-channel strategy; transform coding plus Reed-Solomon coding is the tandem strategy. For each strategy, formulas for the mean-squared error, computational complexity, and delay are found and used to minimize distortion subject to constraints on complexity and delay, for source data modeled as Gauss-Markov. The results of such optimizations suggest there is a complexity threshold such that when the number of operations per data sample available for encoding and decoding is greater than this threshold, tandem coding is better, and when less, channel-optimized transform coding is better. Similarly, the results suggest there is also a delay threshold such that tandem coding is better than joint coding when the permissible encoding and decoding delay is greater than this threshold.