In this paper, a compact stepped slot antenna for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications is proposed. A very small size and UWB bandwidth operation are achieved by integrating a stepped slot in the back side of the antenna. This stepped slot is excited by using a 50 Ω-feed line in the top side of the antenna. The antenna is characterized by an impedance bandwidth between 3.05 GHz and more than 12 GHz. The dimensions of the antenna are 17 mm × 8 mm × 1.27 mm, which leads to the most compact size compared with other works in the literature. The integrated stepped slot is divided into additional elementary slots, where each elementary slot has a matching point. Adding these elementary slots allows to increase further the operating bandwidth. The radiation pattern of the compact stepped slot antenna is omnidirectional in the H-plane and bidirectional in the E-plane. The measurement results agree well with the simulated ones in terms of impedance matching and radiation pattern.
