A radio frequency (RF) system may include an RF transceiver, and a baseband engine, application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) coupled to the RF transceiver and configured to perform a given baseband engine operation from among different baseband engine operations. The baseband engine ASIC may include a memory and a state machine coupled thereto and configured to store a respective set of programming instructions for each of the different baseband engine operations and to permit selection of the given set of programming instructions. The baseband engine ASIC may also include a programmable processing circuit coupled to the memory and the state machine and configured to perform butterfly computations responsive to the given set of programming instructions.