Abstract
Employing multi-hop transmission (MH) in wireless sensor networks achieves the uniform distribution of energy cost between nodes. However, the minimum energy cost isn't completely guaranteed. Therefore, in several cases, the total energy cost might be greater than direct transmission (DT). In this paper, we are interested in determining the factors that influence choosing the efficient transmission manner. It's assumed that there is a judging metric, called characteristic distance and the radio hardware parameters are exploited in specifying the optimum size of the cluster. The proposed design consumes the least energy cost and minimizes the variance of nodes residual energy in comparison with DT, MH and normal clustering. This helps in avoiding energy hole problem and enhancing the network lifetime.