Coding for a delay-dependent fidelity criterion

Coding for fidelity criteria, dependent upon the time delay of coding and transmission, is studied from an information-theoretic viewpoint. The results presented here, unlike the conventional Shannon theory, show that the optimum code frequently has finite block length. By extending some rate-distortion theory results, coding theorems and converses are proven. These suggest a procedure for bounding the block length of the code with minimum distortion.