Positive time varying frequency representation for transient signals has been a hearty desire of signal analysts due to its theoretical and practical importance. During approximately the last two decades there has formulated a signal decomposition and reconstruction method rooted in harmonic and complex analysis giving rise to the desired signal representation. The method decomposes any signal into a few basic signals that possess positive instantaneous frequencies. The theory has profound relations with classical mathematics and can be generalized to signals defined in higher dimensional manifolds with vector and matrix values, and in particular, promotes rational approximation in higher dimensions. This article mainly serves as a survey. It also gives a new proof for a general convergence result, as well as a proof for the necessity of multiple selection of the parameters.Expositorily, for a given real-valued signal f one can associate it with a Hardy space function F whose real part coincides with f. Such function F has the form F = f + iHf, where H stands for the Hilbert transformation of the context. We develop fast converging expansions of F in orthogonal terms of the formwhere B k 's are also Hardy space functions but with the additional propertiesThe original real-valued function f is accordingly expandedwhich, besides the properties of ρ k and θ k given above, also satisfiesReal-valued functions f (t) = ρ(t) cos θ(t) that satisfy the condition ρ ≥ 0, θ ′ (t) ≥ 0, H(ρ cos θ)(t) = ρ(t) sin θ(t),