In this paper, a novel orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulator/demodulator based on real-valued discrete Hartley transform (DHT) is presented and implemented for the IEEE 802.11a/g wireless local area network (LAN). Instead of the conventional complex-valued fast Fourier transform (FFT) for OFDM systems, the proposed architecture employs two real-valued fast DHT (FHT) kernels and one post processing unit. By taking advantage of the real-valued operation of FHT, this approach reduces the number of multiplications compared with the radix-2 FFT. The proposed DHT-based modulator/demodulator was designed and fabricated in 0.18-µm CMOS technology with a core area of 928935 µm2. The average power consumption is about 20.16 mW at 20 MHz and 1.8 V supply voltage. Measurement results of the integrated circuit illustrate its superior chip area and power consumption.