A new algorithm, named segmented second empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm, is proposed in this paper in order to reduce the computing time of EMD and make EMD algorithm available to online time-frequency analysis. The original data is divided into some segments with the same length. Each segment data is processed based on the principle of the first-level EMD decomposition. The algorithm is compared with the traditional EMD and results show that it is more useful and effective for analyzing nonlinear and non-stationary signals.