Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A control resource set (CORESET) may be configured to support multiple transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state control channels. Space division multiplexing (SDM) may be implemented to enable multi-TCI states by using multiple ports and layers. A certain layer and demodulation reference signal (DMRS) port may be associated with a certain TCI state. For orthogonal ports, resources elements (REs) may be assigned such that a first set of REs are assigned to the first DMRS port and a second set of REs are assigned to the second port. The multiple DMRS ports may be code division multiplexed (CDM'd) within an RE such that multiple DMRS ports may be associated with the same RE. For non-orthogonal ports, the same RE may be used for multiple TCI states, where scrambling sequences may be applied to DMRSs associated with the TCI states.