Abstract: In wireless sensor networks, how to balance the energy consumption while creating small network latency is a challenge. An energy-balanced short routing algorithm, called EB-SPR, is proposed in this paper. With EB-SPR, the network is firstly built into a level structure, and then the node selects its next hop node according to its energy status and uses the hop neighbor node with the highest energy status to relay packets. This algorithm effectively balances the energy consumption among the network and prolongs the network lifetime. In addition, EB-SPR creates routing paths with the hop numbers constrained in order to obtain a short path to the sink. We also prove that the routing path length under EB-SPR is at most twice as many as that of the shortest path routing algorithm, meaning that EB-SPR has network latency with an exact upper bound. Simulation results show that EB-SPR effectively extends the network lifetime and produces a small network latency.