This paper presents a new pre coding based adaptive multi-carrier/single-carrier (MC/SC) uplink radio-access (RA) system with improved peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for layered orthogonal frequency division multiple access (Layered-OFDMA) of long term evolution advanced (LTE-A). The Discrete-Cosine transform (DCT) pre coding is applied before sub carrier mapping and IFFT to reduce the high PAPR of the MC uplink system. The conventional SC system is implemented to sustain all the functionalities offered by the release 8 LTE. Extensive computer simulations have been performed to analyze the PAPR of the proposed system. The computer simulation results show that, the PAPR of DCT pre coded MC signals is approximately same as that of conventional SC signals. © School of Engineering, Taylor's University.