Asynchronous Guessing Subject to Distortion

Abstract: The problem of guessing subject to distortion is considered, and the performance of randomized guessing strategies is investigated. A one-shot achievability bound on the guessing moment (i.e., moment of the number of required queries) is given. Applying this result to i.i.d.~sources, it is shown that randomized strategies can asymptotically attain the optimal guessing moment. Further, a randomized guessing scheme which is feasible even when the block size is extremely large is proposed, and a single-letter characterization of the guessing moment achievable by the proposed scheme is obtained.