Abstract This article is focused on the application of plasma technology for the development of microwave lens antennas with electronically controllable radiation gain. With this aim, the analytical background and design procedure for designing a biconcave lens based on plasma dielectric material are presented. The procedure is used to design a plasma lens antenna with a pyramidal horn feed. The effect of switching the designed lens ON and OFF on the radiation gain of the lens antenna is investigated. It is also shown that the plasma frequency of the lens can be used to dynamically adjust the radiation gain. A one-dimensional version of the proposed plasma lens operating at 10 GHz has been developed to validate the concept. Experimentally measured characteristics of a fabricated prototype of the lens antenna based on commercially available fluorescent lamps confirm the presented design procedure and numerical results. The results also show that changing the plasma frequency of the lens can be used to adjust the radiation gain of the proposed lens antenna.