Various embodiments herein provide techniques to operate wideband (WB) cells, and in particular, WB operation for New Radio-Unlicensed (NR-U). The embodiments herein provide more accurate and efficient operation of WB procedures with listen-before-talk (LBT) operation as compared with existing and/or previous solutions. In embodiments, a user equipment (UE) may receive configuration information for a search space set that includes multiple monitoring locations in a frequency domain within a listen-before-talk (LBT) bandwidth part (BWP). The UE may monitor for a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) on one or more of the monitoring locations