An improved and specification-compatible general precoding scheme (GPC) for adjustable peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction in discrete Fourier transform spread orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DFT-s-OFDM) is proposed. Through the rearrangement of periodic padding for precoded data symbols in the GPC precoding matrix, the proposed algorithm does not increase any computational complexity compared to the original GPC. The LTE-based simulation shows the proposed algorithm has a better improvement of PAPR reduction especially in low-order modulations and the performances can be scaled to the other transmission bandwidth. These works contribute to the flexibility of DFT-s-OFDM for supporting 5G transmission over miscellaneous power amplifiers. Introduction: As a low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) variant of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), discrete Fourier transform (DFT) spread OFDM (DFT-s-OFDM) has been standardised as fourth generation (4G) long term evolution (LTE) for uplink (UL) transmission [1] due to its easy implementation and high symmetry to LTE OFDM downlink. Gradually, DFT-s-OFDM has been widely used for three 5G scenarios: enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and ultra-reliable and lowlatency communication (uRLLC); and therefore has adopted for the UL waveform of 5G non-standalone new radio (NR) [2]. However, the services in 5G become more diverse which challenge the flexibility of DFT-s-OFDM [3]. In the viewpoint of signal linearity, 5G NR should be flexible for fitting the different-quality power amplifiers (PAs) of miscellaneous 5G devices. It is worth mentioning that the PA efficiency grows exponentially around the margin of linear and compression region [4, Fig. 5]. Within this region, even a slight improvement of PAPR reduction may significantly enhance the power efficiency. In addition, since the device-to-device (D2D) communications as an enabling 5G issue in LTE has been enthusiastically studied for improving the spectral efficiency, system capacity, and transmission range [5], the PA non-linearity and non-uniform UL power increase the inter-resource block (RB) interference and restrict the coverage dynamicity of the user equipment for D2D power control [6]. As known, lowering PAPR can ameliorate the flexibility of UL power for D2D power control especially in low-complexity PA devices. Fortunately, the mMTC and uRLLC devices in the D2D network are allowed to a low-speed transmission. This motivates us to exploit the merits of general precoding scheme (GPC) [7] on the trade-off between further PAPR reduction and transmission rate by an adjustable parameter. GPC was proposed for generalising all famous precoding transform, such as DFT [1], discrete Hartley transform [8], and Zadoff-Chu transform [9], into a scalable form consisted of periodic extended transform matrix and energy conservation matrix. In this Letter, we propose an improved version of GPC for better PAPR reduction without any increase of computational complexit...