An avalanche photodiode (APD) receiver for intersatellite laser communication links is proposed and its performance is experimentally demonstrated. In the proposed system, a series of analog circuits are used not only to adjust the temperature and control the bias voltage but also to monitor the current and recover the clock from the communication data. In addition, the temperature compensation and multiplication gain control algorithm are embedded in the microcontroller to improve the performance of the receiver. As shown in the experiment, with the change of communication rate from 10 to 2000 Mbps, the detection sensitivity of the APD receiver varies from -47 to -34 dBm. Moreover, due to the existence of the multiplication gain control algorithm, the dynamic range of the APD receiver is effectively improved, while the dynamic range at 10, 100, and 1000 Mbps is 38.7, 37.7, and 32.8 dB, respectively. As a result, the experimental results agree well with the theoretical predictions, and the receiver will improve the flexibility of the intersatellite links without increasing the cost. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)