Abstract: The main objective of wireless sensor network design is to fulfill the task of prolonging network lifetime. The network topology, which is the important foundation of upper layer protocols, serves as the supportive groundwork for achieving this goal. In order to design a topology control algorithm that conforms to the lifetime requirement of wireless sensor networks, the defects of previous algorithms are firstly explored. There are some defects such as deployment restriction, low reliability or poor rationality found in these algorithms. Then a WSN cluster model is constructed and analyzed theoretically according to the requirement of clustering, which ultimately turns to a clustering and cluster-head electing problem with approximate optimizing objectives. A heuristic topology control algorithm of cluster （HTCC） is proposed as a solution to the above problem. HTCC is composed of two methods: cluster constructing （CC） method and cluster-head electing （CHE） method. The clusters can be partitioned by the CC method, and the cluster-heads can be selected by the CHE method. The performance of the algorithm is analyzed and validated through experiments. The result indicates that the network topology of clusters with proper size has the characteristics of low energy consumption and high robustness, effectively prolonging the lifetime of the whole network.