Extreme unequal error protection and perfectly reliable encoding

In this paper we define the new concept of a perfectly reliable encoder (PRE) for erasure channels as an encoder whose performance is optimal for every value of the loss probability. As a first step toward the design of such an encoder, we propose an idealized extreme unequal error protection encoding scheme. We derive models to optimize the encoder performance. We show by experiments that the proposed scheme approaches the theoretical behavior, and quantify the gap with respect to a scheme specifically designed for a given loss probability.