"This thesis describes the development of an optimized software-defined-radio implementation of a distributed beamforming system and presents experimental results for two-source and three- source wired-channel and acoustic-channel distributed beamforming using the time-slotted round-trip carrier synchronization protocol. The frequency and phase synthesizer used in this system is based on an optimized ``hybrid' phase locked loop (PLL) with averaging window which is shown to have high frequency estimation accuracy and consistency. For the wired-channel experiments, each source node was implemented by a TMS320C6713DSK while for the acoustic experiments, each source node in the system was built using commercial off-the-shelf parts including TMS320C6713DSK, microphone, speaker, audio amplifier, and battery. The source node functionality including phase locked loops and the logic associated with the time-slotted round-trip carrier synchronization protocol was realized through real-time software independently running on each source node's C6713 digital signal processor. Experimental results for two-source and three-source realizations of the wired-channel and acoustic-channel distributed beamforming system are presented. The results show that near-ideal beamforming performance can be consistently achieved at acoustic wavelengths equivalent to common radio frequency wavelengths."