Abstract: In order to accurately locate the short-circuit fault on the power cable line, the principle of fault location of the two-terminal traveling wave method has been improved. The traditional long-distance two-terminal synchronization method is replaced by the local clock synchronization method. Thus, the synchronization problem of the two-terminal traveling wave method has been solved from the principle level. The improved fault location method is only related to the time difference between the fault traveling wave arriving at the monitoring points at both ends of the power cable. And the normalized fault point criterion is used instead of the specific numerical criterion to reduce the dependence on the accuracy of the line electrical parameters. Therefore, the improved method has higher fault location accuracy. The double-ended structure of the power cable is simulated by PSCAD. The results show that the improved method has higher location accuracy, and the fault location accuracy is better than the traditional two-terminal traveling wave method under any fault positions.