In order to balance the energy consumption of WSN effectively and improve the network lifetime，an
energy heterogeneity-based multi-chain algorithm (EHMCA) is proposed． In the algorithm，a two-stage heterogeneous network is adopted first，and the network area is divided into a number of equal subregions． Then，the optimal domain radius of clusters is determined according to the spacing between layers，the threshold value of the cluster head is also determined based on the energy of the advanced nodes and the average energy of the whole network，and the multi-hop routing inter-cluster parallel transmission mechanism is employed between layers． Therefore，in the whole network area，the cluster head transmits data to the base station by means of the multi-hop inter-layer multi-link parallel transmission mode and the single hop transmission mode of the optimal cluster． Simulation results show that the network performance of the EHMCA is better than those of the other three kinds of protocols，which
proves that the EHMCA is effective and practical．