In a 5G network, a pre-emptive scheduling request (SR) and a pre-emptive buffer status report (BSR) can be used to reduce the latency of data transmissions on the upstream of a multi-hop integrated access and backhaul (IAB) network from the user equipment UE to the IAB-donor node. A centralized unit (CU) can uniformly ensure that the pre-emptive SR/BSR feature is turned on or off across the entire IAB network regardless of which vendor provides the IAB nodes. Additionally, a message can be sent from a gNodeB to the CU to the IAB node to indicate whether the pre-emptive SR/BSR triggering feature is turned on or off.