The invention relates to a multi-sink deployment and fault tolerance method for a wireless sensor network. A multi-sink optimal deployment method based on improved particle swarm optimization clustering is firstly brought forward, the improved particle swarm optimization is combined with K-means clustering, clustering and partitioning are carried out on all sensor nodes in a network area, the multiple sink nodes are deployed in the center of each cluster respectively, and thus, effects of reasonable partitioning and optimal multi-sink node deployment of the network are achieved. In addition, in view of a condition in which a certain sink node fails in the multi-sink network, a routing algorithm with a fault tolerance mechanism is brought forward, a fault tolerance mechanism with multi-path routing is adopted, two paths from a source node to different sink nodes are built, and when a certain sink node fails, alternate routing is activated. Through deploying multiple sink nodes in the wireless sensor network, the network reliability can be improved, when one sink node fails, other several sink nodes can replace the node for work, reliable operation of the network is ensured, and the service life of the network is prolonged.