Aspects described herein relate to receiving, from a base station on a first subband of an unlicensed frequency band, control information that includes a resource allocation of an uplink transmission associated with the first UE and a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) configuration of a downlink transmission associated with a second UE. The apparatus also may obtain one or more measurements of a DMRS within channel activity on a second subband of the unlicensed frequency band using a listen-before-talk (LBT) operation based on the DMRS configuration. The apparatus also may determine whether the channel activity corresponds to the downlink transmission associated with the second UE based on the one or more measurements of the DMRS within the channel activity. The apparatus also may communicate, with the base station on the second subband, the uplink transmission when the channel activity corresponds to the downlink transmission associated with the second UE.