In this letter, a compact multiband microstrip‐fed planar monopole antenna is presented. The proposed antenna has three resonance modes which cover three bands of wireless standards including universal mobile telecommunications system band (1920–2170 MHz), 3.5 GHz worldwide interoperability for microwave access band (3.4–3.6 GHz), and 5.2 GHz wireless local area network band (5.15–5.35 GHz). The antenna has a simple structure which consists of a rectangular radiation patch with two symmetric folded slots for size reduction, a step‐shaped microstrip feed line, and a rectangular ground plane. Owing to fully printed, simple and small configuration, the proposed antenna fabrication is cost effective. The designed antenna has a total dimensions of 30 × 34×0.8 mm3 which makes this antenna a good candidate for mobile communication applications. The radiation characteristics such as gain, radiation patterns and radiation efficiency of the suggested antenna are investigated. The antenna radiates Omni‐directionally in H‐plane and bidirectionally in the E‐plane. In this design, very high radiation efficiency over the operating bands is obtained. According to the mentioned advantages, the proposed antenna can be a good choice for multiband wireless applications. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:844–847, 2016

time-domain gating is adopted. A same-size metal plate is also measured for calibration.Comparisons of the simulated and measured broadside RCS reductions are shown in Figures 8(a) and 8(b). A good RCS reduction of $20 dB is observed at the resonant frequency, and reasonably close agreements are obtained for both coding cases. The peak RCS reductions in measurements are 3 dB and 1 dB higher than simulations, respectively, which is due to higher magnitude loss of the actual elements. The observed frequency shift of 0.2 GHz is mainly attributed to the deviation of the equivalent circuit parameters of the PIN diode from the manufacturer's datasheet. Other factors, such as soldering, fabrication and measurement accuracy, contribute to the frequency shift as well. When changing the coding, the switching time is also measured by recording the voltage variation [16]. As shown in Figure 9, the time span between two steady states is 12 ls, indicating the fast switching speed of agile scattering fields.