Design analysis of the solid oxide fuel cell and gas turbine combined power system is performed considering different methods for preheating cell inlet air. The purpose of air preheating is to keep the temperature difference between cell inlet and outlet within a practical design range thus to reduce thermal stress inside the cell. Three different methods considered are (1) adopting a burner in front of the cell, (2) adopting a preheater (heat transfer from the main combustor) in front of the cell and (3) using recirculation of the cathode exit gas. For each configuration, analyses are carried out for two values of allowable maximum cell temperature difference. Performance characteristics of all cases are compared and design limitations are discussed. Relaxation of the cell temperature difference (larger difference) is proved to ensure higher efficiency. Recirculation of the cathode exit gas exhibits better performance than other methods and this advantage becomes more prominent as the constraint of the cell temperature difference becomes more severe (smaller temperature difference).