Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communications are described. A position of a user equipment (UE) may be determined when communications between the UE and a base station are routed through a relay node. For example, the UE 115 may determine whether communications are received from the base station or the relay node based on positioning assistance data that contains positioning-related information about different base stations and relay nodes in the system. The UE may then transmit a position metric based on this determination, where a location server uses this position metric for determining the location of the UE. Additionally or alternatively, the location server or base station may use the positioning assistance data to determine whether an uplink transmission is received directly from the UE or via the relay node and may generate a position metric that the location server uses for determining the location of the UE.