A band notched CPW UWB filter backed by rectangular rings is proposed.Initially, cascading of aperture‐backed second‐order microstrip filters is done to achieve the UWB passband. Later, to take advantage of the CPW geometry, the filter is converted to CPW configuration with rings at the back to achieve sharp cutoff characteristics and a notch at 5.1 GHz. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52:950–954, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.25088