Wavelet and Gabor systems are based on translation-and-dilation and translation-and-modulation operators, respectively, and have been studied extensively. However, dilation-and-modulation systems cannot be derived from wavelet or Gabor systems. This study aims to investigate a class of dilation-and-modulation systems in the causal signal space L 2 (R + ). L 2 (R + ) can be identified as a subspace of L 2 (R), which consists of all L 2 (R)-functions supported on R + but not closed under the Fourier transform. Therefore, the Fourier transform method does not work in L 2 (R + ). Herein, we introduce the notion of Θa-transform in L 2 (R + ) and characterize the dilation-and-modulation frames and dual frames in L 2 (R + ) using the Θa-transform; and present an explicit expression of all duals with the same structure for a general dilation-and-modulation frame for L 2 (R + ). Furthermore, it has been proven that an arbitrary frame of this form is always nonredundant whenever the number of the generators is 1 and is always redundant whenever the number is greater than 1.Finally, some examples are provided to illustrate the generality of our results.