Techniques are described that provide noncoherent demodulation via correlating “dirty” templates in wireless communication systems. In particular, the described techniques cross-correlate dirty templates that are adjacent symbol-long segments of the received noisy waveform. Unlike transmitted reference (TR) and differential templates that are noisy, i.e., propagate through the wireless communication channel, these dirty templates are both noisy and offset in time and, thus, are dirty. As a result, the described techniques enable noncoherent demodulation without timing synchronization and channel estimation. Symbol demodulation may be performed utilizing a maximum likelihood (ML) sequence detector or, alternatively, conditional ML demodulation may be performed to reduce receiver complexity. The described techniques may also be applied to a TR scheme to improve performance in the presence of mistiming. In any case, the techniques may be applied to narrowband, wideband, or ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems and remain operational without timing synchronization or channel estimation.