This paper presents a miniature monopole reader antenna for tri-band radio frequency identification (RFID) portable devices. The proposed antenna operates at the main RFID frequencies and can alleviate and compensate for the shortcomings of a single-band antenna. An additional rectangular stub couples with the bent monopole antenna, allowing the latter to resonate at the RFID bands at 902–928 MHz, 2.4–2.48 GHz, and 5.725–5.875 GHz. By bending the feedline, the dimensions of the miniature antenna are reduced to 115.5 × 20 × 1.6 mm3, facilitating its integration into portable devices. The measured bandwidths(return loss < −10 dB) of the proposed antenna are 677, 580, and 250 MHz in the three operating bands, 883–1560 MHz, 2.31–2.89 GHz, and 5.65–5.9 GHz, respectively, with high-gain characteristics. An experimental study of a fabricated prototype of the optimized antenna is performed, and the results verify its good performance.
