Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. During an operation for discovering reconfigurable surfaces, a sensing signal may be transmitted. Based on the sensing signal being transmitted, another signal may be detected at the device that transmitted the sensing signal, another device, or both. The device that detects the signal may combine the detected signal with a modulation sequence that is associated with a reconfigurable surface, where the reconfigurable surface may be assigned a set of unique modulation sequences and configured to apply a modulation sequence to received signals. Based on combining the detected signal with the modulation sequence, the device may determine whether the reconfigurable surface is present within a geographic region.