Although variable-length codes are known to be an efficient class of codes in noiseless coding, little is known about these codes for sources subjected to a fidelity constraint. Variable-length source coding theorems with a fidelity criterion are proved and variable-length coding is shown to be applicable to sources without any regularity requirements such as stationarity. Also, unlike fixed-length coding, it is shown that the convergence of average performances to the distortion-rate function does not depend on the sample path properties of the source.
Published in:
Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on
(Volume:29
,
Issue:
6
)
Date of Publication: Nov 1983