Embodiments of this application provide a network access method for a low power terminal. The method includes: finding, by a low power terminal, at least one high performance terminal in a first resource pool based on a synchronization signal and a broadcast channel of a virtual micro cell that are sent by a high performance terminal; determining, from all found high performance terminals, a first high performance terminal that needs to be used to access a network; obtaining configuration information through a broadcast channel of a virtual micro cell of the first high performance terminal, where the configuration information includes a second resource pool; and sending a random access request to the first high performance terminal by using a resource in the second resource pool.