5G architecture allows the use of new radio alongside long-term evolution-A (LTE-Advanced) and enables cellular mobile networks to handle extraordinarily high traffic volume data. The major challenge in current uplink data transmission systems is making resource blocks (RBs) available in a continuous form and assigning them to active users in an optimum manner to improve the system's spectral efficiency. The best N-subset (BNS) minimization technique is suggested to identify the best of the best continuous chunks of RBs from the existing system bandwidth, followed by a modified recursive maximum expansion (RME) algorithm to assign RBs to users in the most optimal manner. The algorithm together is referred to as a multiuser uplink scheduler BNSRME algorithm. A constraint utility maximization problem is formulated to allocate RBs to UEs in the most optimized manner. Utility matrix is then converted into a weighted sum-rate maximization problem allowing weights to be updated adaptively based on marginal utility values. In addition, a threshold limit is considered based on the signal-to-noise ratio in the BNSRME-TH algorithm, which satisfies multiusers in terms of assigned resources and improves system performance, spectral efficiency, and throughput. This MU scheduling strategy is used in the 5G uplink non-stand-alone cellular network. The findings exhibit that the proposed multiuser algorithm increases system spectral efficiency by 31.65% in comparison with the existing opportunistic algorithms. It has been observed that the performance of the system is further increased by using the MU-MIMO framework. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.