Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a rapidly developing technology, which uses RF signals for automatic identification of objects. The RFID technology offers the advantage of read/write (R/W) capability without being limited by line-of-sight type of propagation. A typical passive RFID transponder often called "tag" consists of an antenna and an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip.RFID tags can be active (with batteries) or passive (batteryless). However, the recent trend for most applications is to demand that the tags be small as well as inexpensive. While the IC chips embedded in the tags are small, it is difficult to reduce the antenna to a size that is very small compared to the wavelength, without sacrificing the efficiency significantly. In addition to a small footprint, a thin planar profile of the tag is strongly desired, so that it can be attached to an object that is being identified without being obtrusive.Globally, each country has its own frequency allocation for RFID. For example, RFID UHF band are: 866-869 MHz in Europe, 902-928 MHz in North and South America, and 950-956 MHz in Japan as well as some Asian countries.Proper Impedance match between the antenna and the chip is of paramount importance in RFID. Due to cost and fabrication issues, adding an external matching network is usually prohibitive in RFID tags. To overcome this situation, it is desirable to have the antenna directly matched to the ASIC. The reactance of the chip is usually capacitive, owing to the fact that the rectifying circuits typically comprise of schottky diodes and capacitors. In our studies, for instance, the input impedance of the antenna was typically tailored to match an IC chip (Philips RFID/ASIC), which has an impedance of Z c ~ 12-j 300 Ohm at 900 MHz.In this presentation we will discuss a number of UHF/RFID tag designs including the hybrid loop (see Fig. 1) [1], dual crossed-dipoles (see Figs. 4 and 7), and the dual crossed-dipoles using an inductively coupled feed [3] (see Fig. 7). We have carried out extensive parametric studies in the process of analyzing the characteristics of the above antennas (see Figs. 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9), and have investigated several techniques [2, 3], including meandering, for size-reduction of these antennas. A design methodology based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is presented for the optimization of conformal antennas with Electromagnetic Bandgap (EBG) surfaces [4,5] to improve the antenna performance (see . The EBG characteristic is realized by utilizing a Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) placed above a thin dielectric substrate backed by a metallic ground plane to act as an Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC).The antenna is then placed above the EBG surface to create the integrated EBG conformal antenna (see Figs. 10 and 11).