Techniques are described for wireless communications at a user equipment (UE). One method includes determining a first cell identifier (ID) associated with a first downlink transmission in a first radio frequency spectrum band of paired radio frequency spectrum bands, determining a second cell ID associated with a second downlink transmission in a second radio frequency spectrum band of the paired radio frequency spectrum bands, and communicating based on the first cell ID and the second cell ID. In some cases, the method may include determining a cell ID associated with a downlink transmission in an uplink radio frequency spectrum band, and receiving the downlink transmission in a subframe of the uplink radio frequency spectrum band. The downlink transmission may be based on the cell ID and a format of a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH), and may include an eight layer single-user multiple-input multiple-output (SU-MIMO) transmission.