Techniques are provided for decoupling uplink and downlink operations. According to certain aspects, a wireless node (e.g., a low power node) may receive, from a base station of a first cell, signaling indicating a random access channel (RACH) configuration for a wireless device. The wireless node may then detect the wireless node performing a RACH detection (based on the RACH configuration) and report the RACH detection and desired UL configuration to the base station of the first cell. The base station of the first cell may then select the wireless node for serving the wireless device for UL operations (e.g., based on the reported RACH detection-and similar reports from other wireless nodes detecting the same RACH procedure).