Various aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to wireless communication. In some aspects, a user equipment (UE) may determine, for an orthogonal frequency division (OFDM) symbol that includes one or more cell-specific reference signal (CRS) resource elements and one or more narrowband physical downlink shared channel (NPDSCH) resource elements, an NPDSCH energy per resource element (EPRE), wherein the NPDSCH EPRE for the OFDM symbol is based at least in part on an EPRE differential between a narrowband reference signal (NRS) EPRE and a CRS EPRE. The UE may demodulate the OFDM symbol based at least in part on the NPDSCH EPRE. Numerous other aspects are provided.