Temperature detection is very important in scientific research and social life. With the increasing development of science and technology, the demand for temperature detection is increased quickly. To solve the problem that temperature detection can not be carried out directly or only can be carried out in cable form in some special circumstances such as sealing, high temperature, high pressure and dust in biological and chemical experiments, a temperature acquisition system based on infrared communication is designed. In the system, a DS18B20 sensor is used as the temperature sensor and a 51 single chip microcomputer is used to collect temperature signals. The collected temperature signals are output through a serial port and are used to modulate the 38 kHz carrier so as to form infrared signals. The infrared signals are received by an integrated infrared receiving head VS1838B in the receiver. Finally, the temperature information is displayed by a LCD1602 device. The experimental result shows that the system can implement the non-contact detection of environment temperature and meet the experimental requirement.