The Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) paradigm is a promising technology to enable the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) for future integration with 5G and 6G infrastructures in smart cities. However, VANET can be susceptible to wireless interference, like co-channel interference, which can cause communication quality and performance to deteriorate, threatening vehicular safety applications, including traffic management and accident prevention. Hence, VANET requires practical interference mitigation strategies, such as digital beamforming, that mitigate the signals from unwanted directions while improving the reception of signals from desired directions with adequate precision, which is helpful for VANET's highly mobile environments. In this paper, a review of the literature on digital beamforming techniques is carried out that examines their advantages and limitations. Furthermore, an important contribution of this paper is the development of an experimental platform for a roundabout VANET based on simulations, where different digital beamforming algorithms, such as phase-shift and Minimum-Variance Distortionless-Response (MVDR), are tested. The results show that the MVDR algorithm leads to improvement due to its adaptability to ad hoc environments. Also, they show that MVDR adaptive beamforming improves Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) and reduces outage event proportion compared to non-beamforming and conventional beamforming scenarios, highlighting their potential to mitigate co-channel interference in highly changing VANET environments. Therefore, adaptive digital beamforming can improve the performance and reliability of VANETs, offering the potential for advanced wireless network implementations in smart cities with 5G and 6G infrastructures.INDEX TERMS Co-channel interference, digital beamforming, interference mitigation, internet of vehicles, vehicular ad hoc network. This paper aims to assess and contrast the performance of digital beamforming algorithms such as phase-shift and