Time-varying and frequency-selective channels in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) network are estimated by first storing, in a buffer at a receiver, a received signal corresponding to a set of pilot tones of a set of OFDM symbols, wherein the pilot tones are predetermined and inserted in frequency subcarriers and time slots of the OFDM symbol. A covariance matrix of the received signal is estimated. A diagonal matrix is estimated based on the covariance matrix and a variance of noise in the received signal. The diagonal matrix indicates delays of non-zero paths in a time domain. A channel impulse response (CIR) for each OFDM symbol is estimated using the diagonal matrix, and the received signal. Then, the CIR is transformed to the frequency domain to obtain the channel frequency response (CFR).