In this brief, we present a novel pipelined architecture for real-valued fast Fourier transform (RFFT), which is dedicated to processing serial input data. An optimized algorithm is proposed for stage division in RFFT to achieve an area-efficient RFFT computing structure with full hardware utilization. A single path butterfly and a real rotator are merged into one processing element (PE) in each stage, except the last stage, to reduce hardware resource utilization. In addition, a novel shift-adder is designed for <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$N$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -point RFFT with <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$W$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -bit signals, and a new data management method based on the PEs is proposed, which saves resources with a more regular flow graph.