In this article, a cognitive radio (CR) integrated antenna system, which has 1 sensing and 24 communication antennas, is proposed for better spectrum utilization efficiency. In the 24 communication antennas, 3 different operating band antennas are realized with an 8-element MIMO configuration. The sensing antenna linked to port 1 is able to sense the spectrum that ranges from 2 to 12 GHz, whereas the communication 8-element MIMO antennas linked with ports 2 to 9, ports 10 to 17 and ports 18 to 25 perform operations in the 2.17–4.74 GHz, 4.57–8.62 GHz and 8.62–12 GHz bands, respectively. Mutual coupling is found to be less than −12 dB between the antenna elements. Peak gain and radiation efficiency of the sensing antenna are better than 2.25 dBi and 82%, respectively, whereas the peak gains and radiation efficiencies of all communication antennas are more than 2.5 dBi and 90%, respectively. Moreover, diversity characteristics of the MIMO antenna are assessed by parameters such as DG, ECC and CCL. It is found that ECC and CCL are less than 0.42 and 0.46 bits/s/Hz, respectively, and also DG is more than 9.1 dB.