Operation principle and design approach of a novel planar end-lire circularly polarized (CP) complementary antenna is proposed. A vertically polarized printed magnetic dipole and a horizontally polarized printed dipole are combined on the same substrate, and a planar CP antenna with end-lire beam in parallel with its plane is thus designed. Prototype antennas centered at 5.80 GHz are then fabricated and measured to validate the operation principle and the design approach. The experimental prototype reported that the impedance bandwidth (20 log |S ₁₁ | ( <; -10 dB) is about 1.90%, from 5.75 to 5.86 GHz and the 3-dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth is about 14.48%, from 5.19 to 6.00 GHz. Therefore, the proposed design is applicable as a low-prolile handheld reader antenna in radio-frequency identilication (RFID) systems.