The invention discloses an antenna selection-based high-energy efficiency transmission method applied to a distributed system. The method comprises the following steps that: 1, the initial number V* of base station antennas selected by each user in a cell is calculated; 2, initial V* antennas are selected for each user kn in the cell, and the initial V* antennas constitute a service antenna set Bn, kn constitutes an n-th user set which represents by an equation that Upsilonn={kn}, Upsilonn and Bn constitute an n-th virtual cell Vn; 2, the large-scale fading factor betakn,l of the user kn to an l-th base station antenna is calculated, and transmission power rhokn provided by a downlink station antenna for the user kn is obtained; 3, a distance D (Vi,Vj) of any two virtual cells Vi and Vj is obtained; and 4, different virtual cells are merged, so that the energy efficiency of the system can be continuously increased. With the method of the present invention adopted, the number of base station active antennas of the distributed system which serve the users can be decreased with the rate of the distributed system ensured, and therefore, the power consumption of base stations can be decreased; and the effective receiving power of each user is controlled, and therefore, the energy efficiency of the system can be effectively improved with the spectrum effectiveness of the system ensured.