The mass machine type communication (mMTC) in 5G requires the technical support of the wireless sensor network (WSN). Compared with homogeneous WSNs, heterogeneous WSNs provide more flexibility and are more in line with the reality. For heterogeneous WSNs, the use of proper routing methods can prolong the lifetime as well as the stability of the system. This paper studies an energy heterogeneous WSN, where nodes can cooperate with each other to improve the energy efficient of the network. We focus on the network routing within distributed energy-efficient clustering (DEEC) protocol, a typical networking/communication protocol for heterogeneous WSNs. First, we derive a proposition on the choice of cooperative single-hop or multi-hop modes, which gives a sufficient condition on cooperative multi-hop transmission. Furthermore, we present two lemmas, which are the conditions on the distance threshold for mode selection. Based on the above, a novel adaptive cooperative routing algorithm combined with DEEC is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed routing algorithm outperforms the benchmark schemes and can effectively reduce the network energy consumption and prolong the network lifetime.

5G中的海量机器通信（mMTC）需要无线传感器网络（WSN）的技术支持。与同类 WSN 相比，异构 WSN 提供了更大的灵活性，更符合现实。对于异构无线传感器网络，使用适当的路由方法可以延长系统的生命周期和稳定性。本文研究了一种能量异构WSN，其中节点可以相互协作以提高网络的能源效率。我们专注于分布式节能集群 (DEEC) 协议中的网络路由，该协议是异构 WSN 的典型网络/通信协议。首先，我们推导出合作单跳或多跳模式选择的命题，这给出了合作多跳传输的充分条件。此外，我们提出两个引理，这些是模式选择的距离阈值的条件。在此基础上，提出了一种结合DEEC的新型自适应协同路由算法。仿真结果表明，所提出的路由算法优于基准方案，能够有效降低网络能耗，延长网络生命周期。