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Renewable energy resources have increasingly been integrated into electric power grids. Moreover, new challenges constantly arise, showing the need for modernization in monitoring, control, and protection. Transmission and distribution systems have explored the use of phasor measurement units (PMUs) in an attempt to meet these requirements. The decreasing cost of hardware components of PMUs, similar to what occurred with digital relays, is an important factor in terms of their worldwide use in different applications. Low-cost variations of PMUs focused on distribution systems, such as micro- and D-PMUs, are growing in number. Thus, this survey article presents significant and recent research conducted in the field of power systems using PMUs. Firstly, it briefly describes the characteristics of PMUs concerning hardware and phasor estimation algorithms. Afterward, recent studies related to transmission and distribution system protection based on PMUs are presented, such as fault detection and location, stability, and wide-area protection. Finally, the article also provided important guidelines, which certainly can be useful for future research in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]