System and method for utility-based scheduling for SDMA transmissions on an uplink of a wireless communications network. A method comprises assigning a utility function to each user in a set of users, selecting a set of selected users from the set of users, assigning uplink transmission resources to each user in the set of selected users, and transmitting a control message to each user in the set of selected users. The selecting comprises iteratively selecting up to K users one user at a time from the set of users, wherein a combination of the selected users maximally increases a value of the assigned utility functions, wherein K is a maximum number of users in the set of selected users