According to the analysis on the reflected wave at the single-phase-to-ground fault point and traveling-wave transmission characteristics of lines in overhead-line distribution network, the method that symmetrical high-voltage pulse is injected into three phases is proposed to acquire the zero-mode waves. Then the time of zero-mode reflected waves reaching the bus bar and the characteristic parameters of wavefront are used as input variables of BP neural network location model of single-phase ground fault. Before extracting the arrival time of the fault zero-mode reflected waves and the waves’ characteristic parameters, this paper respectively adopts the fractional scaling standardization and normalization of extremum to eliminate the influence of the factors except fault distance on the neural network input vector. PSCAD simulation and Matlab programming operation is used, the results show that the method is not affected by branch lines and grounding resistance, which can effectively measure the fault distance.