The transmission characteristics of electromagnetic pulses in cable are of great significance for off-line and on-line fault location of most traveling waves as well as detection and location of local discharge. Transmission loss occurs when pulses pass through a crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) cable. Because different waveforms have different component parameters, wave propagation characteristics such as attenuation and propagation velocity will change accordingly. In order to obtain the propagation characteristics of different pulses in cables, a method based on the cable frequency domain model combined with the vector fitting method is proposed to obtain the propagation characteristics of electromagnetic pulses in cables on the premise of considering the skin effect of conductor core and the frequency variation characteristics of semiconductor layer. Based on this method, the propagation characteristics of different kinds of electromagnetic pulse waves are studied and analyzed, and the validity and accuracy of this method are verified by comparing with the improved J-Marti model in the traditional simulation software ATP-EMTP. Finally, based on genetic algorithm, the parameters of cable semiconductor layer are inversed, and a nondestructive extraction method for semiconductor layer parameters is proposed.