In this work, two approaches were proposed for the recognition of partial discharge patterns. The first approach was neural network with backpropagation algorithm, and the second approach was angle calculation between t재 operator vectors. PD signals were detected using three electrode systems; IEC(b), needle-plane and CIGRE method II electrode system. Both of neural network and angle comparison method showed good recognition performance for the patterns similar to the trained patterns. And the number of operators to be used had a great influence on the recognition performance to the untrained patterns.