Abstract: In order to characterize the temperature distribution in cigarette burning cone more accurately, a temperature-based method for determining puffing time was proposed. Six interpolation methods, line-connection, the nearest neighbor point, modified Shepard method, Kriging interpolation, bicubic interpolation and radial basis function, were compared in temperature analysis; the temperature distribution in burning cone was digitally analyzed with the selected interpolation method. The results showed that:1) temperature-based method better solved the problem of low sensitivity associated with burning line method in determining puffing time, and ensured the accuracy of temperature data in the further interpolation calculation; 2) Kriging interpolation method featured a smooth temperature distribution curve and higher interpolation accuracy with the average relative error of the samples of 9.86%; which solved the problems of poorer readability of temperature distribution and lower interpolation accuracy of traditional line-connection method.