In recent years, Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks are widely used to perform a variety of real-time applications. Since sensor nodes are battery powered, developing an energy efficient algorithm to increase the network life time is challenging. This paper proposes a cluster based mechanism, namely, Augmented EDEEC, to improve the network life time. This algorithm is obtained by modifying the distance metric and level of heterogeneity in the existing Protocol. This new protocol exhibits 1.25 times more network lifetime than the existing Distributed Energy Efficient Clustering algorithms. The results are benchmarked with the energy efficient clustering protocols like DEEC, DDEEC and EDEEC. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.