A parasitic fed ultra‐wideband antenna is proposed for WLAN and UWB applications. The proposed antenna consists of parasitic hexagonal patch surrounded by hexagonal slot and ground plane in same side of the substrate. Microstrip line present on the other side of the substrate excites the patch parasitically. The overall size of an antenna is 25 × 25 × 1.6 mm3. The prototype antenna is designed, fabricated and tested. It provides good return loss characteristics and radiation pattern. The measured −10 dB impedance bandwidth are 2.12 GHz (3.71 GHz to 5.83 GHz) and 6.1 GHz (6.05 GHz to 12.15 GHz) with resonance frequencies at 5.25 GHz and 6.73 GHz respectively. Since, this antenna provides good resonance at 5.25 GHz having impedance bandwidth more than 1 GHz, this can be used for WLAN applications. This antenna also provides notch band from 5.83 GHz to 6.05 GHz where vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) devices operate. Hence, this antenna does not cause interference to VANET devices. Parametric studies on patch, slot dimension, feed length are done to validate the results. The simulated and measured results of the antenna are in close agreement with each another. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 58:2996–3000, 2016