Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described in which a user equipment (UE) or base station may generate orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols based on a permutation matrix (P) that permutes guard interval (GI) samples and data samples such that the OFDM symbols have power values across the symbols that are supportable by a transmitting device. The permutation matrix may map GI inputs to a subset of subcarriers for an OFDM communication, where the permutation matrix determined based at least in part on a first number of columns of a sub-matrix of a first matrix. The first matrix may be an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) matrix, or may be a product of the IFFT matrix and a subcarrier mapping matrix. The first number of columns may correspond to a number of subcarriers that carry time-domain GI samples.