The inner-valence excitations of a xenon 5s electron were investigated by the electron impact method with an electron-energy-loss spectrometer. The incident energies of the electron beam are varied between 500 eV, 100 eV, 50 eV and 30 eV in order to assign the resonances in the spectra. Besides the optically allowed excitations normally observed by photoabsorption methods, lots of optically forbidden transitions were studied in the present work. The autoionization Rydberg series 5s−1ns, 5s−1np, 5s−1nd have been observed. Their energy levels, resonant profiles and quantum defects were obtained from the electron-energy-loss spectra. Other than single excitations, there are many double excitations in this energy region, which needs further sophisticated calculations and higher resolution experiments to assign most of the resonant features.