Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. In some cases, devices such as band limited (BL) or coverage enhancement (CE) user equipment (UE) having limited transmitting and receiving capability may operate using a subset of a system bandwidth of a carrier (e.g., narrowbands). To support frequency hopping or frequency diversity in transmissions, for example, such devices may utilize retuning when a resource allocation moves from a first narrowband to a second narrowband. Retuning, however, may create challenges when transmitting and receiving capability is limited. Aspects of this disclosure may support a flexible starting physical resource block (PRB) for indicating new resource allocations for BL or CE UEs. In some aspects, a UE is disclosed which may retune between consecutive transmission time intervals (TTIs) or subframes, for example, from a first tuning band to a second tuning band (e.g., a newly defined retuning narrowband).