One of the important characters in wireless sensor networks is the limitation of energy

which requires to design an energy efficient route protocol to prolong the network lifetime.An energy efficient clustering algorithm（EECA） is proposed based on low energy adaptive clustering algorithm（LEACH）.It elects cluster heads based on residual energy and distance between cluster heads by the base station

which balances the distribution of clusters and the load of cluster heads.Simulation results show that EECA outperforms LEACH with prolonging the network lifetime over 37 % and improving the energy utilization rate by 16 %.