To address the protection challenges in distrib ution networks containing Distributed Generation

a novel protection method for active distribution networks based on Graph Fourier Transform (GFT) and conflict graphs is proposed in the paper. According to the network topology

a weighted conflict graph is constructed using the positive-sequence fault components of currents from both sides of each line. In this graph

each line is treated as a node

and the input signal for each node is the cosine similarity between the positive-sequence fault current components on both sides of the line. By constructing a Laplacian matrix and obtaining its eigenvector matrix

the spectral coefficients are derived. Subsequently

the fault degree is calculated between the spectral coefficient vector and each row vector of the eigenvector matrix to establish the line fault protection criterion. A 10kV distribution network model with distributed generation (DG) was developed using PSCAD. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed algorithm can accurately detect the faults under different fault types and locations with two DG access scenarios. It can withstand single-phase ground faults with 1000Ω transition resistance

has strong capabilities of anti-noise and anti-asynchronization.