I don't even have to read the article to say '..no, that's completely wrong'. You have to have some minimal RF circuitry in any transmitter or receiver or it just plain won't work; you have to have at least the final RF amplifier circuit, otherwise where do you get transmit power to the antenna? Even purely digital communications devices (read as: WiFi, for instance) have this. You can put much of it in silicon now, but there has to be some external to it, too, and if it has any serious transmit power, the final amp has to be external.