Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described that involve determining multiple beamformed transmission beams for transmission of an opportunistic or multi-beam discovery reference signal (DRS) over a shared radio frequency spectrum band. The base station may determine a contention exempt transmission (CET) period for the shared spectrum band and transmit the DRS using multiple transmission beams during CET period or the base station may perform a listen before talk (LBT) procedure, and transmit, based on the LBT procedure, the DRS over a shared radio frequency spectrum band. The base station may transmit an indication of the type of DRS transmission, a subframe offset, random access configurations, and/or error correcting codes to enable a user equipment to discover, connect to, and acquire timing information associated with the network.