ABSTRACTA left-handed metamaterial (LHM)-loaded monopole antenna is presented in this paper for size reduction technique. Numerical, analytical and experimental analyses are carried out to demonstrate the design procedure and model verifications. The antenna is composed of a single cell of the LHM and a monopole element. To realize miniaturization, the strategy of increasing the coupling between the LHM cell and the unloaded monopole antenna was chosen for the proposed antenna. The configuration reduces the resonant frequency of monopole by 13.15%. The proposed antenna is matched with a stepped impedance transformer, offers high efficiency, high gain and exhibits a dual-band property.