A simple guideline for designing a compact ultra wide-band planar antenna is presented. The proposed antenna has the capability to reject any undesired subband within the whole bandwidth of its operation by incorporating a tuning slot within the radiating structure. Using GML1032 dielectric substrate with a relative permittivity of 3.2, the designed antenna features a compact size of 27 X 27 mm(2). Results of the measurement show that the designed antenna has a 10 dB return loss bandwidth from 2.8 GHz to more than 11 GHz excluding any undesired subband, such as the 4.9-5.9 GHz band assigned for IEEE802.11a and HIPERLAN/2. The antenna has near omni-directional characteristics, and its radiation efficiency is higher than 90% over the whole pass-band. (C) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.