The versatility of the three-dimensional (3-D) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to model arbitrarily inhomogeneous geometries is exploited to simulate realistic groundpenetrating radar (GPR) scenarios for the purpose of assisting the subsequent designs of high-performance GPR hardware and software. The buried targets are modeled by conducting and dielectric prisms and disks. The ground model is implemented as lossy with surface roughness, and containing numerous inhomogeneities of arbitrary permittivities, conductivities, sizes, and locations. The impact of such an inhomogeneous ground model on the GPR signal is demonstrated. A simple detection algorithm is introduced and used to process these GPR signals. In addition to the transmitting and receiving antennas, the GPR unit is modeled with conducting and absorbing shield walls, which are employed to reduce the direct coupling to the receiver. Perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary condition is used for both simulating the physical absorbers inside the FDTD computational domain and terminating the lossy and layered background medium at the borders.