The invention belongs to the field of underwater sound communication and navigation, and relates to a single transponder slope distance underwater sound positioning method and system based on adaptiveKalman filtering (AKF). The single transponder slope distance underwater sound positioning system based on the adaptive Kalman filtering (AKF) is composed of a transponder, a sound signal transceiver, a Doppler flow meter, an attitude sensor, a depth sensor and an adaptive Kalman filtering controller. Based on an adaptive Kalman filtering (AKF) algorithm, single slope distance information, depthmeasuring information, speed information and attitude information of an underwater vehicle are integrated, noise of the sensors, time delay, update frequency and multi-sensor information fusion are considered, a single slope distance positioning method of the single transponder of the underwater vehicle is established, three-dimensional coordinates of the underwater vehicle are calculated, and accurate positioning is realized. According to the single transponder slope distance underwater sound positioning method based on the AKF, arrangement and positioning work costs of the transponder can besaved, the problems that speed and distance are limited by a sound signal propagating underwater, the slope distance measuring updating frequency is slower, and updating with depth and attitude measuring information is not synchronous can be solved, and thus, the positioning efficiency and precision are improved.