A wireless device or UE is configured to function as a relay on behalf of a donor access node. The relay UE performs call admission controls including balancing the resources of the relay access node with the resources provided by the donor access node providing services to end UEs via the relay access node, i.e. a backhaul connection of the relay UE. The backhaul throughput is compared to a throughput requirement of the end UEs being served by the relay UE. If the throughput requirement is larger than the backhaul throughput, any new connection requests from an additional end UE may be rejected. A threshold may be defined to ensure that there are ample resources at the backhaul prior to accepting connection requests from additional end UEs.