Thinking of Radio as Smart Enough to Live Without Rules some researchers now believe that recent advances in a new technology called cognitive radio might make it possible to think about the spectrum as limitless. These researchers say that more powerful microchips and improvements in signal processing - combined with networking ideas borrowed from the Internet - may someday eliminate radio's current hub-and-spoke model, in which high-powered transmitters blast signals to dumb receivers. Instead, intelligent radios - smart in that they are able to sense, respond to and work with other radios in their environment in order to transmit in the most efficient manner possible - would be linked in a web in which traffic was passed along in packets on constantly shifting frequencies until it reached its destination.