In this article, a cavity‐backed bowtie antenna (CBBA) is proposed and investigated.Compared with the conventional CBBA, parasitic stubs are added to the open‐end of the Bowtie. The parasitic stubs provide capacitive loading and allows the design to exhibit a low profile over a relatively wide bandwidth. Parametric studies are performed to optimize the antenna performance. For verification, a prototype was fabricated and measured. Experimental results show the VSWR of less than 2.0:1 from 1.97 to 8.5 GHz. However, the radiation pattern degrades beyond 7.5 GHz. This limits the operating bandwidth to about 117%. The height of the prototype is 15 mm which is only 0.1 λmax (λmax is the wavelength at the lowest operating frequency) © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:1422–1426, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27573