Abstract: To solve the problem of poor accuracy of fault location caused by multi-branch collector line of offshore wind farms,a fault section location method based on traveling wave principle and fault branch criterion matrix is proposed. Inherent distance difference matrix（IDDM）is established through analyzing wind farm topology and the transmission path of traveling wave. Variational Mode Decomposition（VMD）and Teager Energy Operation（TEO）are used to determine the arriving time of initial traveling wave to each terminal. Then,fault distance different matrix（FDDM）is obtained by the two-terminal traveling wave method,and calculating the difference between IDDM and FDDM to establish the fault branch criterion matrix（FBCM）. The corresponding fault section criterion is proposed according to the difference of FBCM at different fault sections. The simulation result show that the proposed method can accurately determine fault section and it is robust to transition resistances,fault types and other factors,which has high accuracy rate.