Disclosed are techniques for performing positioning operations. In an aspect, a user equipment (UE) receives a downlink physical channel from a base station, the downlink physical channel received via one or more slots of one or more subframes of one or more radio frames, the downlink physical channel carrying user data and/or control information from the base station to the UE, receives, from the base station, an indication that the base station will transmit reference signals for positioning on the downlink physical channel, and performs a positioning measurement of a reference signal received on the downlink physical channel.