An asynchronous channel reservation design is disclosed having a partial symbol alignment. The transmitting node performs a listen before talk (LBT) procedure on a transmission channel shared by one or more transmission/reception points (TRPs). Upon detecting passing the LBT, a preamble is transmitted followed by a dynamic length cyclic prefix that includes the normal cyclic prefix plus an additional variable period. The transmitter then transmits the channel reservation message after the dynamic length cyclic prefix. On the detector side, once the preamble is detected, the detecting node assumes a normal cyclic prefix before attempting to detect and decode the channel reservation information in the message. Using a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) in the channel reservation message, the detecting node may detect the channel reservation message information from the shifted version of the detected message.