Picosecond thermoreflectance is an unprecedented powerful technique for nanoscale heat transfer analysis and metrology, but different sources of artifacts were reported in the literature making this technique difficult to use for long delay (several ns) thermal analysis. We present in this paper a new heterodyne picosecond thermoreflectance (HPTR) technique. As it uses two slightly frequency shifted lasers instead of a mechanical translation stage, it is possible to avoid all artifacts leading to erroneous thermal parameter identifications. The principle and set-up are described as well as the model. The signal delivered by the HPTR experiment is calculated for each excitation configurations, modulating or not the pump beam. We demonstrate the accuracy of the technique in the identification of the thermal conductivity of a 50 nm thick SiO(2) layer. Then, we discuss the role of the modulation frequency for nanoscale heat transfer analysis. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3665129]