Techniques to manage heterogenous carrier types

User Equipment (UE), comprising:

• a processor circuit;
• and
• a network control component for execution on the processor circuit to locate a synchronization signal (SS) and a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) in a physical resource block (PRB) pair of a long term evolution (LTE) network, the PRB pair having a physical signal pattern for a first carrier type, the physical signal pattern for the first carrier type to have a same number of defined positions between the SS and the CRS within the PRB pair as a physical signal pattern for a second carrier type.

An evolved node B (eNB), comprising:

• circuitry;
• and
• a resource mapper component for execution on the circuitry to map a synchronization signal (SS) and a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) to a physical resource block (PRB) pair according to a physical signal pattern for a first carrier type, the physical signal pattern for the first carrier type to have a same number of defined positions between the SS and the CRS within the PRB pair as a physical signal pattern for a second carrier type.