Salt, Eric2024-05-142024-05-142003-01January 20https://hdl.handle.net/10388/15677A wireless data distribution system could be more cost effective than retrofitting cable to a finished building. The radio channel has the disadvantage of being lossy, noisy, and frequency selective. To compensate, the modulator/demodulator needs to be more robust. This thesis investigates the feasibility of implementing a modern wireless data distribution in an in—building environment. The cost of FPGA's is constantly decreasing, making this solution more and more cost—effective as time goes on. The ISM band is used in order to avoid licensing issues. This band requires that spread spectrum modulation with a spreading gain greater than or equal to 10 be used. To get a full complement of music channels on the ISM bandwidth requires a high order modulation scheme. In this study, the feasibility of implementing a 16— QAM modem is investigated. The resulting system is a hybrid modulation scheme with direct sequence spread spectrum modulation in tandem with 16-QAM. The entire system, excluding the RF portion, is implemented on three Altera 100,000 gate FLEX 10KA series FPGA's. The design is specified using Verilog HDL. This facilitates future design changes and ASIC development.Thesis