Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. A variable frequency oscillator (VFO) in electronics is a oscillator whose frequency can be tuned (i.e. varied) over some range.It is a necessary component in any tunable radio receiver or transmitter that works by the superheterodyne principle, and controls the frequency to which the apparatus is tuned.In a simple superhet radio receiver, the incoming radio frequency signal (at frequency fIN) from the antenna is mixed with the VFO output signal tuned to fLO, producing an intermediate frequency (IF) signal that can be processed downstream to extract the modulated information. The IF signal frequency is chosen to be either the sum of the two frequencies at the mixer inputs (up-conversion), fIN + fLO or more commonly, the difference frequency (down-conversion), fIN fLO, depending on the receiver design.