In this work we propose an energy-efficient transmission strategy for wireless sensor networks that operate in a strict energy-constrained environment. Our transmission algorithm consists of two components: a binary-decision based transmission and a channel-aware backoff adjustment. In the binary-decision based transmission, we obtain the optimum threshold for successful transmission via Markov decision process (MDP) formulation. A channel-aware backoff adjustment, the second component of our proposal, is introduced to favor sensor nodes seeing better channel in terms of transmission priority. Extensive simulations are performed to verify the performance of our proposal over fading wireless channels.