A compact monopole antenna excited by a conductor-backed coplanar waveguide (CBCPW) is developed for wireless USB dongle applications. The proposed antenna has a compact dimension of $14mm{ imes}47.4mm{ imes}3.5mm$, which is suitable for a USB dongle housing. A slotted elliptical patch and a CBCPW with vertical vias are employed to achieve a further size reduction and an improved impedance bandwidth. The measurement result demonstrates that the fabricated antenna resonates from 2.25 GHz to 10.9 GHz, which covers all of the important wireless communication bands, including WiBro (2.3 GHz to 2.4 GHz), Bluetooth (2.4 GHz to 2.484 GHz), WiMAX (2.5 GHz to 2.7 GHz and 3.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz), satellite DMB (2.605 GHz to 2.655 GHz), 802.11b/g/a WLAN (2.4 GHz to 2.485 GHz and 5.15 GHz to 5.825 GHz), and ultra-wideband (3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz) services. The radiation characteristics of the proposed antenna when attached to a laptop are tested to investigate the influence of the keypad and the LCD panel of the laptop.