Abstract <p>The paper proposes a cost-effective method of navigation support for a group of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) which do not have expensive precision timing systems and absolute speed sensors. The approach is based on the use of a short-baseline acoustic positioning system (SBL APS). A method has been developed for AUV positioning with the coordinates being estimated according to their motion model. A short-baseline version of the APS is presented, in which the received signal processing unit for generating the time delay measurements on the AUV additionally measures the received signal frequency. A location estimation algorithm based on a particle filter has been developed for this purpose; it is designed to work on each AUV in real time. The descriptions of the proposed algorithms and the results of computer simulation of their operation are presented.</p>