Aspects of the present disclosure disclose techniques for the indication of the allocation of the downlink (DL) demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) ports for the data channel in NR communications. In some examples, the channel state information (CSI) reference signal (CSI-RS) may be associated with a corresponding DM-RS for a DL data channel. The transmitting device, in some examples, may further transmit a notification that provides resource allocations (e.g., port allocations) that minimize the redundant information that is required to be transmitted from the base station to the user equipment (UE) when the DM-RS port allocation is the same as the CSI-RS port allocation received by the UE in an earlier time slot.