A radio system includes a radio frequency (RF) integrated circuit (IC), a baseband digital signal processing (DSP) IC, and a serial digital interface coupling data there-between. In one embodiment of the invention, the RF IC has an input receiver to receive a serial digital transmission bit stream from a digital signal processing integrated circuit; a data recoverer coupled to the input receiver to recover digital data bits from the serial digital transmission bit stream; a low pass filter coupled to the data recoverer convert the digital data bits into an analog transmission signal; a mixer coupled to the low pass filter to up-convert the analog transmission signal from a baseband frequency to a second selectable carrier frequency as a transmit radio frequency signal; and an amplifier coupled to the mixer and an antenna, the amplifier to amplify the transmit radio frequency signal for broadcast over the antenna.