A method for a relay user equipment (UE) to forward packets between a base station and a remote UE is disclosed. The method includes assigning network functions by the base station to at least one of the remote UE and the relay UE for a relay network slice, and selecting one or more sidelink radio resources and a corresponding RAN profile for forwarding the packets between the remote UE and the relay UE, where the selecting the one or more sidelink radio resources includes sending a sidelink-measurement configuration from the base station to at least one of the remote UE and the relay UE. The sidelink-measurement configuration includes a list of sidelink-candidate component carriers having licensed band and/or unlicensed band component carriers.