Abstract In this paper, a novel method is proposed to increase the gain and radiation efficiency of a compact patch antenna. By employing a combination of three efficient techniques, we have developed a multi-resonance L-DGS antenna with a high gain of 5 dB and an efficiency of 99.6%. Furthermore, a novel compact Double Negative metamaterial unit cell and its equivalent circuit are investigated, to achieve high miniaturization of 30×30 mm2 and multi-band wireless applications (2.8 GHz, 4.1-4.45 GHz, 5.6 GHz). Koch snowflake fractal is introduced along radiation patch edges to improve the antenna matching. The antenna is designed using commercially available package CST software, printed on Rogers RT5880, and the probe feed mechanism is adopted for the antenna excitation. Then, to prove the validation of the antenna design, the equivalent circuit is presented and simulated using ADS of Agilent software. The compared simulation results given by CST, HFSS and ADS software have confirmed the antenna use for WIMAX, C-band and WLAN applications.