A three-dimensional (3-D) finite-difference time domain (FDTD) scheme is employed to simulate ground-penetrating radars. Conducting shield walls and absorbers are used to reduce the direct coupling to the receiver. Perfectly matched layer (PML) absorbing boundary conditions are used for matching the multi-layered media and simulating physical absorbers inside the FDTD computational domain. Targets are modeled by rectangular prisms of arbitrary permittivity and conductivity. The ground is modeled by homogeneous and lossless dielectric media.