Methods and systems including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for training and deploying machine-learned communication over radio frequency (RF) channels. One of the methods includes: determining first information; generating a first RF signal by processing using an encoder machine-learning network; determining a second RF signal that represents the first RF signal altered by transmission through a communication channel; determining a first property of the first signal or the second RF signal; calculating a first measure of distance between a target value of the first property and an actual value of the first or second RF signal; generating second information as a reconstruction of the first information using a decoder machine-learning network; calculating a second measure of distance between the first information and the second information; and updating at least one of the encoder machine-learning network or the decoder machine-learning network based on the first and second measures.