—We consider transmission of a continuous amplitude source over an L-block Rayleigh-fading Mt 2 Mr multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel when the channel state information is only available at the receiver. Since the channel is not ergodic, Shannon’s source–channel separation theorem becomes obsolete and the optimal performance requires a joint source–channel approach. Our goal is to minimize the expected end-to-end distortion, particularly in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. The figure of merit is the distortion exponent, defined as the exponential decay rate of the expected distortion with increasing SNR. We provide an upper bound and lower bounds for the distortion exponent with respect to the bandwidth ratio among the channel and source bandwidths. For the lower bounds, we analyze three different strategies based on layered source coding concatenated with progressive superposition or hybrid digital/analog transmission. In each case, by adjusting the sy...