A dual‐resonant patch antenna applicable to active radio frequency identification (RFID) tags is designed. The designed antenna has been skillfully integrated with the active RFID tag circuit. The antenna consists of two parts. One part comprises stacked shorted patches and a ground plane. The other part is an active tag circuit mounted on the bottom of the antenna. The measurement results reveal that the antenna has the return loss less than –10 dB within the bandwidth of 42 MHz (from 911 to 953 MHz), which totally covers the 5 MHz bandwidth from 920 to 925 MHz (The band is also allowed for passive RFID) requirement for active RFID in China. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53:1280–1284, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26000