Aspects are disclosed for operating a relay via an MBSFN-based backhaul link. Control resources are allocated, which include a first set of control resources and a second set of control resources. For some embodiments, a portion of the first set of control resources is concatenated with a portion of the second set of control resources to form a concatenation of resources whereas, in other embodiments, an indication scheme is implemented to provide an indication of a first or second allocation size respectively associated with the first and second set of control resources. At least one control signal is then transmitted which includes at least one of the concatenation or the indication. Other disclosed embodiments are directed towards configuring a user equipment to decode a control signal generated according to the aspects disclosed herein.