An energy-efficient multi-hop scheme based on cooperative MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technique is proposed for wireless sensor networks, taking into consideration the modulation constellation size, transmission distance, and extra training overhead requirement. The scheme saves energy by selecting the hop length. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, a detailed analysis of the energy and delay efficiencies in the proposed scheme compared with the equidistance scheme is presented. Results from numerical experiments indicate that by use of the proposed scheme significant savings in terms of total energy cousumption can be achieved.