Systems and methods for multi-beam optic-wireless vehicle communications

A vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET), comprising:

• a first vehicle having a plurality of antennas;
• a first neighbor vehicle that transmits a data packet that is received by said first vehicle via a first antenna out of the plurality of antennas;
• a second neighbor vehicle to receive said data packet send by said first vehicle via a second antenna out of the plurality of antennas;
• and
• said first vehicle further comprising a switching unit to transfer the data packet between said first and second antennas;
• wherein communication between an antenna of a neighbor vehicle and an antenna out of the plurality of antennas of the first vehicle further comprises at least one directional radio link, and wherein the data packet further comprises metadata including an antenna ID, neighbor vehicle ID, initial location, hop count, sequence number, and application attributes;
• and
• wherein the switching unit generates a Switched Packet List (SPL), said SPL comprising a source ID, sequence number for the data packet, acknowledgement status, and a cached copy of the data packet.