Although nitrous oxide has been identi ed as an important intermediate during the combustion of many solid propellants, there is a limited amont of data concerning the high temperature oxidation of hydrocarbons by nitrous oxide. In the present study, ignition delay times of CH4-,C2H6-,CH4-C2H6-,C2H4,C2H2-N2O mixtures with and without O2 were investigated through shock-tube experiments and chemical kinetic simulations. Experimentally, it is shown that the addition of oxygen induces a significant reduction of the activation energy of the ignition process. Simulations demonstrate that delay times are usually satisfactorilly predicted but that the detailed reaction models used do not capture all the features of the OH* emission profiles.