This resulted in detector manufacturers responding by changing their local oscillator frequency. The receiver was a super-heterodyne type with a low-power magnetron serving as the local oscillator. Another point of contrast is the expected bandwidth of the signal and local oscillator. The performance of a signal processing system depends on the characteristics of the local oscillator. The coherent tone is produced by the local oscillator. The scattered light is then mixed with the local oscillator on the detector. Then we can model such imbalance using mismatched local oscillator output signals. This is unlike the superheterodyne design, where the local oscillator is at an offset frequency. In many tunable receivers, the bandpass filter is tuned in tandem with the local oscillator. Where the local oscillator is zero, the signal is rejected. The first copy is mixed with a local oscillator and low-pass filtered. An oscillator, which became the first local oscillator, was ordered for the frequency of . NASA developed and built the mixers, local oscillator chains and power amplifiers for this instrument. In that case, only the local oscillator frequency is changed. The local oscillator must produce a stable frequency with low harmonics.