Wireless devices flood the airwaves with signals that blend into chaos — as if everyone in a room started talking at once. Scientists have proposed a solution: smart panels, reminiscent of acoustic tiles. Each cell can either reflect a radio wave on command, like a wall echo, or absorb it, as soundproofing dampens noise. Assembled into a mosaic, these elements weed out interfering signals, leaving only the desired ones.

Engineers trained the system to quickly find the best pattern of reflections and absorptions using an algorithm similar to a neural network. Once configured, the panel uses no power — the circuit freezes, like a switch in the right position. As a result, in the spectrum — that is, across the entire range of frequencies — there is less disorder, and radar can pick up even weak signals, much like a photodetector registers a faint glow.