The study of bow-tie antenna forpulse’radiation in a ground penetrating radar systemis complicated due to the existence of reflections fromthe feed,the far end of the antenna,the air-groundinterface and their interactions.The FDTD methodsare applied in this paper by incorporating a trans-parent source,a bow-tie antenna above the ground,and a lossy soil to investigate the issues.Numeri-cal verifications are conducted to check the accuracyof the method.The radiation properties are demon-strated by near-field radiation patts and time do-main waveforms at different positions.The influencesdue to different antenna heights and soil parametersare also discussed in detail.