In the voltage source converter based high-voltage direct current (VSC-HVDC) grids, fast and reliable protections are the key technologies. The traditional protection schemes are easily affected by fault resistance, line distributed capacitance, etc. Meanwhile, the influence of fault current limiting strategy (FCLS) has not been fully considered. In this paper, the fault characteristics under FCLS and the feasibility of traditional travelling wave protections are analyzed. To improve the reliability and sensibility, a similarity comparison based pilot protection scheme is proposed, which focuses on the relationship between the fault characteristics and the state of the protected transmission line, with the establishment of a precise frequency-dependent transmission line model. The criteria based on the similarity comparison calculated by cross-wavelet can identify the fault effectively. Meanwhile, the protection scheme can also endure the influence of error synchronization. Finally, the protection performance is verified in the PSCAD/EMTDC under different fault conditions.