Faults in distribution systems directly affect the indices of power quality and the system's reliability, causing high financial costs. Therefore, precisely determining the fault location reduces the time spent for the system's maintenance and restoration, especially when there are permanent faults. The objective of this work is to present a fault location algorithm based on the theory of traveling waves. The algorithm consists of analyzing the high frequency signals of the fault, using the Discrete Wavelet Transform, which accurately detects the reflected waves, after the fault, at the ends of the line. The proposed approach was validated using simulations in the software PSCAD/EMTP, considering the CIGRE test system with radial topology. The results obtained are promising, since the faults were located with average errors less than 1%.