Adaptive Joint Source–Channel Rate Allocation Policies for Delay Sensitive Applications Over Fading Channels

In this correspondence, we consider a problem of optimal source, channel coding rate pair allocation over a wireless link based on the channel fading state and the queue length of the transmitter. The source is delay sensitive. Therefore, our objective is to minimize the mean delay under given mean power and distortion constraints. We show that by jointly optimizing the source and channel rates, one can gain substantially in performance as compared to only source or channel rate optimization, as is usually considered in the literature. This is shown for single user, single-input-single-output (SISO), multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), and multiuser systems. The methods used are from Markov decision theory