Traveling wave location technology can quickly and accurately locate the fault according to the collected time information when the high-voltage AC transmission line fault occurs in the system. Due to its high location accuracy, it has attracted extensive attention. This paper introduces the development of traveling wave location technology at home and abroad from the aspects of accurate detection of traveling wave signal, high-precision synchronous clock technology, fault location algorithm and engineering practice. Then it introduces the working principles and their advantages and disadvantages of single-end traveling wave location, double-end traveling wave location and network traveling wave location methods. The main technical problems existing in the traditional traveling wave location research have been analysed, which puts forward the corresponding solutions. Finally, the development prospect of traveling wave location technology is prospected, in order to provide reference for subsequent research.