This article presents a compact quadrilateral patch antenna design for cognitive radio system having dimensions of 50 × 50 × 1.6 mm3. The proposed antenna is designed with a triangular shape slot structure and quadrilateral patch with two step feedline on the either side of the FR4 substrate which is capable of switching for twelve different bands of frequency. The frequency range varies from 2.46 to 3.90 GHz, with a relative impedance bandwidth of around 45%. To achieve frequency agility six PIN diodes are used to vary the length of higher inclined arms of the slot. In the proposed approach, incorporation of biasing circuit into the ground plane reduces the parasitic effect, which improves the performance of the antenna. Moreover, the robustness of the proposed design is demonstrated in terms of reduction of antenna size, a number of frequency state, frequency ratio and number of PIN diodes used for frequency agility. The simulated and measured results for reflection coefficient, radiation pattern, relative bandwidth, gain, and efficiency are found to be in good agreement with each other.