Technology is disclosed for a relay node (RN) operable for backhaul beam failure recovery (BFR) in a fifth generation (5G) new radio (NR) integrated access and backhaul (IAB) network. The relay node can be configured to: decode a periodic reference signal for beam failure instance detection received from a donor node (DN); identify abeam failure between the RN and the DN, wherein the beam failure occurs when N beam failure instances are identified, wherein N is a positive integer; identify whether a candidate beam of one or more candidate beams at the RN has a reference signal greater than a threshold; prepare a BFR request; and encode the BFR request.