Tradeoff Between Source and Channel Coding for Erasure Channels

In this paper, we investigate the optimal tradeoff between source and channel coding for channels with bit or packet erasure. Upper and Lower bounds on the optimal channel coding rate are computed to achieve minimal end-to-end distortion. The bounds are calculated based on a combination of sphere packing, straight line and expurgated error exponents and also high rate vector quantization theory. By modeling a packet erasure channel in terms of an equivalent bit erasure channel, we obtain bounds on the packet size for a specified limit on the distortion.