In this paper a novel design for a tri-band monopole antenna coupled with metamaterial units is introduced. The proposed antenna was designed to cover WiMAX (2.5, 3.5) and WLAN (5.2) bands. In our proposal, a coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed circular-disk monopole antenna is coupled with three split ring resonator (SRR) units which exist on its back side. In our design a monopole antenna and SRR units are designed first to resonate at 5.2 GHz and 2.5 GHz respectively. In addition, antenna is loaded with post to force resonance at 3.5 GHz. SRR units are used for 2.5 GHz resonance to miniaturize antenna size, and our proposed antenna considered an electrically small antenna (ESA) at its first resonance frequency. Simulated and measured results exhibit a good agreement that validate our design