Various examples and schemes pertaining to narrowband reference signal (NRS) transmission on non-anchor carriers in narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) are described. A wireless network indicates a subset of one or more paging groups of user equipment (UEs) among a plurality of UEs in an NB-IoT cell. The wireless network then transmits one or more narrowband reference signals (NRSs) in one or more paging frames or one or more paging occasions associated with the subset of one or more paging groups.