In this paper, a new metamaterial based tag antenna is presented for ultra-high frequency (UHF) passive radio frequency identification (RFID). The modified meander line and the capacitive-tip loading are adopted for the dipole radiated element. A new planner Chanel shaped unit cell is incorporated in the ground plane. The compact antenna has a miniaturized size of 22mm × 18.5mm (0.067λ×0.056λ at 915MHz). Optimized results show that the antenna has a large impedance bandwidth of 196MHz (21.42%) with minimum reflection coefficient of -35.52dB. All tag design setups are detailed and discussed.