The present invention relates to a method for setting the optimum transmission path for increasing energy efficiency in a wireless ad hoc network. More particularly, the present invention relates to setting an optimized data transmission path in a multi-hop data transmission environment in a wireless network comprising machine to machine (M2M) communication devices, which operate with limited energy, based on link information of the network, such as the position of a node in the network. And to this end, the present invention relates to a wireless M2M communication network protocol minimizing energy consumption by selecting the optimum transmission method for each of the hops from the following transmission methods: a single input single output (SISO) method; a virtual single input multiple output (V-SIMO) method; and a virtual multiple input multiple output (V-MIMO) method.