A system and method are provided for implementing improved frequency estimation for wireless communications in support of a broader set of use cases including outdoor use cases and use cases that involve lower power transmissions with reduced signal-to-noise ratios for receivers particularly in systems configured according to the pending IEEE 802.11 ah standard. These systems and methods provide greatly improved frequency estimation over that prescribed for devices operating according other IEEE 802.11 standards, including the frequency estimator conventionally used in systems operated according to the IEEE 802.11n standards, and the proposed frequency estimator specified for IEEE 802.11ac systems. The disclosed techniques facilitate improved frequency estimation schemes that reuse of a short training field (STF) stored in memory, employ joint STF-long training field (LTF) estimation, use portions of a guard interval (GI), and create of multiple-phase estimates, with different symbol separation to improve a signal-to-noise ratio of the frequency estimate.