Methods, systems, and devices are described for managing wireless communications in a machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless Wide Area Network (WAN). A physical layer frame is generated. The frame being used for wireless M2M communications on a forward link in the M2M wireless WAN. The frame including no more than three channels. The physical layer frame including a first channel including paging channel, a second channel including a traffic channel, and a third channel including an acknowledgment (ACK) channel. A time division multiplexing (TDM) operation is performed on pilot symbols and data symbols to obtain a TDM pilot burst. At least one TDM pilot burst is inserted into each channel of the physical layer frame. The physical layer frame is transmitted on the forward link at a low data rate.