It is a great challenge to differentiate Partial Discharge (PD) induced by different types of insulation defects in high voltage cables. Some types of PD signals have very similar characteristics and are specifically difficult to be differentiate, even for the most experienced specialists. T o overcome the challenge, a Convolutional Neural Network (C NN) based deep learning methodology for PD pattern recognition is presented in this paper. Firstly, PD testing for five types of artificial defects in E thylene-Propylene-R ubber (E PR) cables was carried out in the High V oltage (HV) laboratory to generate signals containing PD data. Secondly, 3500 sets of PD transient pulses were extracted and then 33 kinds of PD features were established. T he third stage applies a C NN to the data: typical C NN architecture and the key factors which affect the C NN based pattern recognition accuracy, are described. Factors discussed include the number of the network layers, convolutional kernel size, activation function, and pooling method. T he paper presents a flowchart of the C NN based PD pattern recognition method and an evaluation with 3500 sets of PD samples. Finally, the C NN based pattern recognition results are shown and the proposed method is compared with two more traditional analysis methods, i.e. Support V ector Machine (SV M) and Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN). T he results show that the proposed C NN method has higher pattern recognition accuracy than SV M and BPNN, and that the novel method is especially effective for PD type recognition in cases of signals of high similarity, which is applicable for industrial applications. Index Terms-C onvolutional neural network, deep learning, high voltage cables, partial discharge, pattern recognition.