The fault identification process in transmission systems involves three functions: discrimination, classification and phase selection. The current study classifies the methods that applied for each function. Moreover, this study introduces criticism and assessment study that helps the power system protection engineer to choose the best fault identification scheme at responsible indices. Investigated solutions for the drawbacks appeared with the previous methods are suggested. This study also proposes sensitive and automated fault identification scheme to solve the existing challenges such as high-impedance faults (HIFs), non-linear modelling of arcing etc. Several simulation studies are employed using alternative transients program/electromagnetic transient program (ATP/EMTP) package on a sample 500 kV test system to ensure the performances of the proposed scheme compared with the previous methods. Simulation results concluded that: the proposed identification scheme has the ability to discriminate correctly between HIF and low-impedance faults using current signal captured from one end only. Moreover, the proposed scheme alleviates perfectly the problems associated with load variations by adaptive threshold settings and reduces the impacts on the environmental and external phenomena.