Ever wondered why your Wi-Fi or phone signal sometimes gets all glitchy, even when you’re not moving? A lot of it comes down to multipath interference — when a wireless signal bounces off walls, cars, trees, you name it — and your device gets peppered by the same signal from different directions at slightly different times. Chaos!

A team of scientists from the Nagoya Institute of Technology have engineered a solution — a passive metasurface that acts like a smart bouncer.

The surface requires no electricity or complicated tech to organize things. It inertly lets in the first signal — the real one — and blocks all of the other echoey signals responsible for interference.

Using things like metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSEFETs) and diodes, they build small structures that can alter the signal when signals arrive. First-come, first-served, so to speak.

Testing revealed their design cut out over 90 percent of unwanted echo signals.

The system is still in its infancy, and there is work to be done. For example, it currently requires strong signals to work and can catch interference only from certain angles. But with a few alterations, it has the potential to make wireless networks, smart gadgets and the Internet of Things much more reliable and less expensive to operate.

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