I still don't know the OP's requirement for data rate, it's still ambiguous; however, I meant to use the FPGA as the 2nd stage down- conversion and the demodulator both. The whole receiver (all COTS):
1) 5.8 GHz BPF 2) Mini-circuits mixer 3) Fixed L.O. (with amp) 4) IF amp (assume a 1st I.F of about 1.2 GHz) 5) IF filter (e.g. EPCOS) - don't use SAW unless triple-transit ok. 6) ~500 MSPS converter (with at least 1200 MHz BW) 7) FPGA: Cyclone 3, Spartan, Virtex5, etc ...The above is for 72Mbits/s. If it's only 1.5 Mbps, then it can be a lot simpler. Step 4,5,6 could be adapted for direct conversion, which would be cheaper, but lower performance.
Frank