Embodiments for providing demodulation reference signals to provide side information for interference cancellation are generally described herein. In some embodiments, a sub-frame is prepared comprising two slots and configuring a physical resource block (PRB) for each slot, wherein each PRB comprises twelve Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers transmitting for a duration of 7 OFDM symbols per slot. In resource elements on each of three of twelve OFDM subcarriers, two pairs of demodulation reference signals (DMRS) are allocated to form three DMRS sets. Symbols are mapped with a first modulation for the two pairs of demodulation reference signals to three of the twelve OFDM subcarriers for transmission. A second modulation is added to a first of the three DMRS sets and a third modulation is added to a second of the three DMRS sets to indicate side information regarding an interfering signal for use in mitigating the interfering signal.