The swift proliferation of wireless data communication systems, and the ever-increasing demand for faster data rates requires that engineers be able to quickly design, implement and test new wireless algorithms for data communications. While simulation is useful, it is often beneficial to verify these algorithms in real hardware. This process of implementation can provide useful feedback to the algorithm designer (e.g. the hardware resources used by an algorithm). This paper provides a description of a rapid prototyping system used to design, implement, and validate an 802.11b PHY as a starting point for developing new wireless data algorithms.