Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine June 2017 - 46

Historical Article:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2017.160050

Early History of Polish Radars
Zbigniew Czekała, PIT-RADWAR S.A., Warszawa, Poland
Piotr Samczyn´ski, Warsaw University of Technology, Warszawa, Poland

INTRODUCTION
The history described in this article starts in the 1920s, when one
of the founders of Polish radiolocation, Professor Janusz Groszkowski from the Warsaw University of Technology, started his
research in radio-communications technology. Professor Groszkowski received his PhD in 1928 for his work entitled "The Compensation Method for Controlling Wave Stability" [1]. He had
already published a revolutionary discussion in Polish in 1925 on
"Cathode Waves and Their Use in Radiotelegraphy", which has
since been translated into many languages; the first translation,
entitled "Les Lampes à plusieures électrodes et leurs applications
en radiotechnique", was published in Paris in 1927. In the 1930s,
he continued his research in this area, and in 1935 he established
the State Telecommunications Institute in Poland, now known as
PIT (the present name is PIT-RADWAR). Since then, tremendous
progress in Poland in the development of applied technology in
radio-communications has been observed. Many intentioned
technologies invented by Professor Groszkowski were later applied in radars, the main two being the first oxide-coated cathode
applied in magnetron (1937) [8] and the first metal magnetron
with inner resonant circuits and an oxide cathode (1939) [9]. The
outbreak of World War II (WWII) in September 1939 slowed
down the research in this field significantly, but selected work
was conducted covertly. After WWII, the Polish research institute
PIT was reactivated, and together with the newly established Radar Department of the Warsaw University of Technology the first
attempts to develop a radar in post-war Poland were undertaken
in 1948.
The first Polish experimental radar was built in 1951 and was
assembled mostly out of parts of a German Freya radar which had
been found on Polish territory shortly after the end of WWII. The
operating radar frequency was around 200 MHz. This demonstrator gave the Polish engineers an opportunity to pick up the first
radar echoes. From this point, the development of radar technology in Poland accelerated markedly, so that the first operational
Polish radar, the NYSA-A, passed the governmental acceptance
tests in 1953 and was delivered to the Polish Army in 1954. This
Authors' current address: Warsaw University of Technology,
Institute of Electronic Systems, Nowowiejska 15/19, Warszawa,
00-665 Poland, E-mail: (psamczynski@wp.pl).
Manuscript received February 25, 2016, revised June 8, 2016,
and ready for publication June 8, 2016.
Review handled by M. Greco.
0885/8985/17/$26.00 © 2017 IEEE
46

radar was the first Polish industrial construction with an operating frequency of 600 MHz. The radar allowed for the detection of
Mikoyan-Gurevich (MIG)-15 fighters at a range of up to 150 km.
This article covers the main milestones of radar development in Poland from the 1950s to the 1970s. In this period, the
development of the new line of technology was, naturally, subordinated to military applications as radar had been found to be
very useful during WWII, resulting in a large demand for radar
equipment in the post-war period. Since then, military applications have dominated radar development, and it is through military use where radar technology reached its highest level. The
Polish radar history presented here will therefore address only
military radar usage as the most representative of radar technology development. The history described in this article ends
in the 1970s, when the first fully coherent radars using linear
frequency modulation and pulse compression, as well as digital
signal processing were developed, to be implemented into operational radars in the following decade. This step was a milestone
in Polish radar development, changing the way radar engineers
approached the process of radar design and having an important
impact on radar development in Poland for at least the next two
decades. From the 1980s through to the present day many different kinds of radars have been developed and the authors of this
article hope to have the opportunity to describe them in future
publications.

PROFESSOR JANUSZ GROSZKOWSKI-THE FATHER OF
POLISH RADIOLOCATION
Professor Janusz Groszkowski (1898-1984) was born in Warsaw
on the 21st of March 1898 (Figures 1, 3). From an early age he
was fascinated by the technical sciences and technology. His father, Theodor, had a strong influence on his interests and was fascinated by electrical engineering himself, even corresponding by
mail with the great inventor Thomas Edison. Theodor encouraged
his seven year old son Janusz in his attempts to construct different mechanical and electrical equipment using electrical current. In
their home library, the young Janusz Groszkowski read works on
the groundbreaking experiments carried out by the likes of Hertz
and Marconi, strengthening his desire to become an engineer from
an early age [1].
In 1915, Janusz Groszkowski began studying at the Warsaw
University of Technology (WUT), Warsaw, Poland. During this
period his interest focused on radiophone and radiotelegraphy,
in particular. He broadened his knowledge in this field by car-

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