Abstract: In order to meet the demand of satellite laser altimeter (SLA) for high measurement accuracy, the design principles and requirements of receiving amplifier were analyzed. The parameters relationship and optimized parameters were given after some main performance parameters such as bandwidth, signalnoise ratio(SNR), detection sensibility and amplifier gain were analyzed and researched in terms of theory. The results show that SLA could achieve the measurement accuracy of false alarm rate of about 1% with the measuring range of 450 km~650km, pulse width of 8 ns~12 ns, working wavelength of 532 nm and 1064nm.