Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described that provide for measurements for narrow-band (NB) Internet of Things (IoT) devices. A user equipment (UE) may receive a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) during a paging occasion and via a non-anchor carrier. The UE may process the CRS by determining and/or making quality measurements of the paging carrier. The quality measurements may be used to determine whether a paging occasion should be terminated early to conserve UE power and to prevent an extended “on” duration during the discontinuous receive cycle of the UE. In some examples, the UE may combine statistics and/or measurements based on processing of both the CRS and a narrow-band reference signal (NRS).