Abstract: Rapid advances in sensor technology and wireless communications have led to the development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, the sensor nodes in WSNs have a finite lifetime since it is often impractical, or even impossible, to recharge their batteries once they have been deployed. When the energy of a sensor node has been fully consumed, it can play no further role within the WSNs. In an attempt to prolong the lifetime of WSNs, various schemes have been proposed. This paper proposed a lifetime-extension under uniform distribution (LEUD) scheme which not only prolongs the lifetime of WSNs, but also optimizes its performance by maximizing the total number of active regions within the networks. To evaluate the effectiveness of our scheme, we chose three uniform distribution algorithms with LEUD to analyze and compared the performance of our scheme. Numerical simulations are performed which demonstrate that when the deployed sensor nodes have an equal initial energy and are distributed uniformly within the networks, LEUD provides an improved networks performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]