Abstract A wideband electrically small antenna (ESA) based on simplified composite right/left-handed transmission line (SCRLH-TL) is designed, fabricated and tested. The antenna consists of two different sized SCRLH-TL unit cells with different+1st-order mode resonance frequencies. The wideband property of antenna is achieved when these two+1st-order mode resonance frequency suitably merge. A dispersion analysis of the SCRLH-TL reveals that an increase in series of the dual-spiral capacitor would decrease the+1st-order mode resonance frequency, thus reducing the electrical size of the proposed antenna. The 10 dB fractional bandwidth (FBW10 dB) was 54.5 % and the measured maximum was 96.2 %, with an electrical size of 0.32λ0×0.16λ0×0.015λ0 at 3.0 GHz (where λ0 is the wavelength in vacuum). It is shown that the numerical results closely fit the measured results.