  We consider the problem of joint source-channel coding with distortion and
perception constraints from a rateless perspective, the purpose of which is to
settle the balance between reliability (distortion/perception) and
effectiveness (rate) of transmission over uncertain channels. We find a new
finite-blocklength bound for the achievable joint source-channel code rate with
the above two constraints. To achieve a superior rateless characteristic of
JSCC coding, we perform multi-level optimization on various finite-blocklength
codes. Based on these two, we then propose a new JSCC coding scheme called
rateless stochastic coding (RSC). We experimentally demonstrate that the
proposed RSC can achieve variable rates of transmission maintaining an
excellent trade-off between distortion and perception.
