  The inspiral of compact binaries, driven by gravitational-radiation reaction,
is investigated through 7/2 post-Newtonian (3.5PN) order beyond the quadrupole
radiation. We outline the derivation of the 3.5PN-accurate binary's
center-of-mass energy and emitted gravitational flux. The analysis consistently
includes the relativistic effects in the binary's equations of motion and
multipole moments, as well as the contributions of tails, and tails of tails,
in the wave zone. However the result is not fully determined because of some
physical incompleteness, present at the 3PN order, of the model of
point-particle and the associated Hadamard-type self-field regularization. The
orbital phase, whose prior knowledge is crucial for searching and analyzing the
inspiral signal, is computed from the standard energy balance argument.
