An Ultrawideband (UWB) planar monopole an-tenna is designed using the material distribution ap-proach to topology optimization. The design variablesare the local conductivity values in a 75 × 75 mm areawhere the radiating element can be located. Theantenna is optimized for maximum reception, in anattached coaxial cable, of incoming plane waves. Thewave propagation is modeled using the time domain3D Maxwell equations discretized using FDTD, andthe optimization is carried out using a gradient-basedoptimization method, in which the derivatives aresupplied through solving corresponding adjoint equa-tions. The outer dimensions of the optimized antennais 75 × 60 mm, and its reflection coefficient |S11 |,with respect to a feeding signal in the coaxial cable,stays below −10 dB throughout the frequency band1.2–9.7 GHz.