This paper proposes a methodology based on order statistics to study the energy-efficient (EE) power allocation for wireless communication transmitters. Water-filling power allocation maximizes the EE when transmitting and processing power consumption is considered. Solutions are typically presented in an iterative form, which complicates analysis and adaptive implementation. Time-consuming simulations are rather required to assess their performance. Order statistics allows analyzing the solution without knowledge of the channel realization. We analytically show how the EE depends on the system parameters. The computing efficiency of our proposal, which is executing one or two orders of magnitude faster than the state-of-the-art algorithms with a performance loss of less than 1 dB, facilitates its applicability in vehicular environments.

Peer Reviewed