  A transmitter without channel state information (CSI) wishes to send a
delay-limited Gaussian source over a slowly fading channel. The source is coded
in superimposed layers, with each layer successively refining the description
in the previous one. The receiver decodes the layers that are supported by the
channel realization and reconstructs the source up to a distortion. In the
limit of a continuum of infinite layers, the optimal power distribution that
minimizes the expected distortion is given by the solution to a set of linear
differential equations in terms of the density of the fading distribution. In
the optimal power distribution, as SNR increases, the allocation over the
higher layers remains unchanged; rather the extra power is allocated towards
the lower layers. On the other hand, as the bandwidth ratio b (channel uses per
source symbol) tends to zero, the power distribution that minimizes expected
distortion converges to the power distribution that maximizes expected
capacity. While expected distortion can be improved by acquiring CSI at the
transmitter (CSIT) or by increasing diversity from the realization of
independent fading paths, at high SNR the performance benefit from diversity
exceeds that from CSIT, especially when b is large.
