A non-coherent communication system in which a transmitting device does not transmit a pilot/DMRS, such that the receiving device may be configured to determine or decode the information received from the transmitting device without performing any channel estimation. An apparatus for wireless communication at a receiving device receives, from a transmitting device, a non-coherent signal having data. The apparatus may determine data from the received signal without performing a channel estimation. In another aspect, an apparatus at a transmitting device divides an information payload including a set of bits into multiple subsets of bits, maps each of the multiple subsets of bits into a respective sequence of complex symbols, generates a non-coherent transmission signal based on the respective sequences, and transmits the non-coherent transmission signal to a receiving device.