A waveform synthesis technique for radio frequency identification (RFID) transmitters and an RFID system making us of the technique are disclosed. The RFID transmitter in example embodiments synthesizes a continuous transmitter waveform from a symbol alphabet without Nyquist or interpolation filters. High spectral occupancy waveforms are achieved which include the ability to do both linear and nonlinear predistortion with no increase in computational load once the signal set has been adapted to compensate for linear and nonlinear distortion in the transmitter analog circuitry. A polarity generator can be used to impart the required polarity to each waveform. The RFID transmitter can be employed in RFID readers to reduce the computational requirements of the digital signal processor (DSP).