Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) developed a software-controlled “smart surface” called RFocus that uses more than 3,000 antennas to amplify the signals at the receiver. Researchers successfully tested that RFocus could boost the average signal strength by 1,000 percent. Apart from providing the strong signal strength, the platform is also very cost-effective, with each antenna costing only a few cents. The main purpose of the developers of RFocus was to develop a cost-effective approach that could be used in a wider range of applications.