Abstract: The insulation defects, which are more likely to occur in the field-made cable intermediate joints, may cause the partial discharges after the cable is put into operation, leading to the accelerated aging of the joint insulation. The RF detection of the partial discharges achieves the non-invasive measurement, but is still rarely used in the detection of the partial discharges in the cable intermediate joints. In this paper, considering the fact that it is necessary to leave a break in the metallic shield of the joints for the cross-bonding grounding of the cable intermediate joints, we try to set a near-field sensor at the break to couple the partial discharge signals at the joints. The research results show that the discharge pulse waveforms detected by the electric and magnetic field sensors are generally similar at the same detection position and voltage, and that the frequency spectrum is mainly distributed in 10~200 MHz, with the magnetic field having a greater spectral density in the 10~100 MHz band and the electric field having a greater spectral density in the 100~200 MHz band. The average amplitude and the total number of discharge pulses at different voltages increase with the increase of the voltage. In addition, as the pulse amplitude increases, the ratio of the spectral energy in the 10-100 MHz band to the total energy of the spectrum also increases and gradually stabilizes. The results of this paper preliminarily verify the feasibility of the detection of the partial discharges in the cross-bonding cable intermediate joints through the RF detection. It determines a reasonable detection frequency band, which is expected to realize a novel non-invasive partial discharge detection.