Techniques for wireless communications are described. A demodulation reference signal generated using user information and a noncoherent modulation technique may be communicated between wireless devices. A data sequence may be extracted from the demodulation reference signal based on demodulating the demodulation reference signal using the noncoherent modulation technique and decoding the demodulation reference signal. The data sequence may be used to reconstruct a version of the demodulation reference signal used to descramble a received version of the demodulation reference signal. The descrambled demodulation reference signal may be used to estimate a data channel between a transmitting device and a receiving device.