Aspects of the present disclosure disclose techniques for implementing a wideband reference signal to improve the narrowband channel estimation performance associated with narrowband demodulation reference signal (DMRS) for the data channel in NR communications. Specifically, because the wideband reference signal may occupy wider bandwidth than the DMRS, the channel estimation realized may be more accurate than solely relying on the narrowband DMRS. In some examples, the wideband reference signal, which may be control reference signals (CRS), channel state information (CSI) reference signal (CSI-RS) in downlink or uplink sounding reference signal (SRS), may be associated with a corresponding narrowband DMRS in a data channel. The wideband reference signal may be either included in the control channel region or the data channel region.