The invention discloses a propagation characteristic-based short-circuit voltage sag characteristic quantity calculation method of a power distribution network. The propagation characteristic-based short-circuit voltage sag characteristic quantity calculation method comprises the steps of acquiring a parameter of the power distribution network, calculating a steady-state power flow of the power distribution network to obtain a steady-state voltage of each node of the power distribution network, and calculating load equivalent impedance; forming a conversion matrix of a transformer according toa transformer parameter, correcting equivalent impedance among nodes, and building a propagation matrix of voltage sag passing through the power distribution line; considering a power supply-fault point connection line as a fault feeder, considering other feeders as non-fault feeders, building a voltage slag characteristic equation of the fault feeder, and building a voltage sag propagation characteristic equation from a fault source to a load end by combining the transformer and a line propagation matrix; and calculating voltage sag characteristic quantity distribution in the power distribution network under different fault types according to the voltage sag propagation characteristic equation. A parameter of the power distribution network and the structure characteristics thereof can beutilized, the voltage sag distribution characteristic is analyzed, the method is simple and effective, and engineering application is easy.