Wireless sensor networks(WSNs) are energyconstrained,so energy saving is one of the most important issues in typical applications.The clustered WSN topology is considered in this paper.To achieve the balance of energy consumption and utility of network resources,we explicitly model and factor the effect of power and rate.A novel joint optimization model is proposed with the protection for cluster head.By the mean of a choice of two appropriate sub-utility functions,the distributed iterative algorithm is obtained.The convergence of the proposed iterative algorithm is proved analytically.We consider general dual decomposition method to realize variable separation and distributed computation,which is practical in large-scale sensor networks.Numerical results show that the proposed joint optimal algorithm converges to the optimal power allocation and rate transmission,and validate the performance in terms of prolonging of network lifetime and improvement of throughput. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are energyconstrained, so energy saving is one of the most important issues in typical applications. The clustered WSN topology is considered in this paper. To achieve the balance of energy consumption and utility of network resources, we explicitly model and factor the effect of power and rate. A novel joint optimization model is proposed with the protection for cluster head. By the mean of a choice of two appropriate sub-utility functions, the distributed iterative algorithm is obtained. the convergence of the proposed iterative algorithm is derived analytically.We consider general dual decomposition method to realize variable separation and distributed computation, which is practical in large-scale sensor networks. Numerical results show that the proposed joint optimal algorithm converges to the optimal power allocation and rate transmission, and validate the performance in terms of prolonging of network lifetime and improvement of throughput.