This article presents a fast, hardware efficient logic for fault detection and classification in transmission lines. The proposed logic employs only one-terminal current samples and is based on multi-resolution wavelet analysis. First-level high-frequency details of the modal currents in the range of 5 to 10 kHz are extracted. Depending on the amount of high-frequency components in the transformed current signals after processing, the faults are classified into ten types. An adaptive threshold value is chosen, rather than a fixed threshold in the case of faults involving the ground, to make the classification reliable and accurate. The validity of the proposed logic was exhaustively tested by simulating various types of faults on a system modeled in Alternative Transient Program (ATP)/Electromagnetic Transient Program (EMTP).The proposed logic was found to be acceptably reliable and accurate even in the presence of fault resistance and current transformer (CT) saturation.