A base station (BS) may transmit, and a user equipment (UE) may receive, a physical channel, such as a narrowband physical downlink control channel (NPDCCH) or a narrowband physical downlink shared channel (NPDSCH). In an interference-limited scenario in a network, it may be desirable to perform additional processing to introduce interference randomization into the control channel to ensure that the UE can recover data of the control channel. Some types of UEs, such as legacy UEs, may not be capable of recovering the control channel when the additional processing is performed. In some aspects, the BS may identify a type of UE associated with a cell, and may transmit a physical channel processed using a processing scheme selected based at least in part on the type of UE associated with the cell.