Cellular digital packet data (CDPD) is a new service for wide-area data communication with wireless mobile users. CDPD system uses the existing infrastructure of the analog Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) cellular telephone network to transmit data with a channel hopping technique. The CDPD system employs Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK) as a modulation scheme and a Reed-Solomon code for error control to transmit high-quality data in the mobile and wireless environment. Most current CDPD receivers use errors only decoding of the Reed-Solomon code, although an improved errors and erasures decoding technique would also be possible. This thesis undertakes a performance evaluation of the CDPD system with an errors and erasures decoder for the Reed-Solomon coding. A thorough system simulation is conducted for both white Gaussian noise and flat Rayleigh fading channel environments. Results show that improved coding gains of 0.5 ~ 1 dB are possible for the additive white Gaussian noise channel and improved coding gains of 1.9 ~ 2.7 dB are possible for the fading channel. / Master of Science