Abstract: On the basic of fully investigating and analyzing of development status of the international and national combined cycle power system, the advantages and disadvantages of the various power systems were summarized, and the bottleneck technical problems restricting their development were analyzed. Based on the development status and challenges of small aviation power system in China, the performance requirements of combined cycle power system suitable for aviation field were proposed, including high power-to-weight ratio, high reliability, low structure complexity, high thermal efficiency and low fuel consumption. Analyzing the existing research results and application experience of combined cycle power system used in other fields, some technical difficulties were summarized for the development of combined cycle power system applied in the aviation field, such as structure design and layout, theoretical and experimental research methods, control strategies, and corresponding solutions. In this paper, some technical suggestions were provided for the aviation application of combined cycle power system, and a new direction was pointed out for the development of high-performance and high-level small aviation power system in China.