In this paper, a novel triple-band microstrip-fed slot antenna for wireless communication systems operating at 2.4, 5.2, and 5.8 GHz is demonstrated. The slot antenna is originally designed to radiate at 2.4 GHz. By etching a stair-shaped slot on the ground plane and adding several stubs at the edge to excite the first higher-order mode, we can create another resonant band at 5 GHz. According to the results, the impedance bandwidths are 227 and 778 MHz at the 2.4- and 5-GHz bands, respectively. In addition, the dimension of the proposed slot antenna is smaller than that of the conventional rectangular-slot antenna. (C) 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.