Abstract: Certain aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques for processing reference and data signals for uplink transmission. A method is provided for wireless communications. The method generally includes obtaining different sets of samples for at least one of: a data signal or a reference signal; spreading the different sets of samples for the at least one data signal or reference signal using separate discrete Fourier transform (DFT) processing blocks; interlacing the spreaded sets of samples by assigning the spreaded sets of samples from each of the separate DFT processing blocks to equally spaced tones; and transmitting the at least one data signal or reference signal on the assigned tones in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) symbol.