Aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for configuring a search space for reverse sidelink communications between one or more sensors/actuators (SAs) and programmable logic controller (PLC) in internet of things (IoT) applications. Particularly, the techniques described herein configure a search space (e.g., subset of all available sub-channels) for reception of sidelink packets (e.g., physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH) and physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH)) that may be received at the PLC from the one or more SAs. In some examples, the PLC may monitor the subset of subchannels and decode the sidelink packets received on the subset of subchannels without the need for the PLC to perform blind decoding of all sidelink sub-channels as is currently required in conventional systems. Thus, the disclosed techniques reduce latency and maximize the resource utilization (e.g., by using less processing power and bandwidth) for sidelink communications.