  This article examines the queueing performance of communication systems that
transmit encoded data over unreliable channels. A fading formulation suitable
for wireless environments is considered where errors are caused by a discrete
channel with correlated behavior over time. Random codes and BCH codes are
employed as means to study the relationship between code-rate selection and the
queueing performance of point-to-point data links. For carefully selected
channel models and arrival processes, a tractable Markov structure composed of
queue length and channel state is identified. This facilitates the analysis of
the stationary behavior of the system, leading to evaluation criteria such as
bounds on the probability of the queue exceeding a threshold. Specifically,
this article focuses on system models with scalable arrival profiles, which are
based on Poisson processes, and finite-state channels with memory. These
assumptions permit the rigorous comparison of system performance for codes with
arbitrary block lengths and code rates. Based on the resulting
characterizations, it is possible to select the best code parameters for
delay-sensitive applications over various channels. The methodology introduced
herein offers a new perspective on the joint queueing-coding analysis of
finitestate channels with memory, and it is supported by numerical simulations.
