An approach is provided to compensate for inter-carrier interference caused by phase noise in a transmitted or received signal. The approach involves causing an estimation of one or more phase noise spectrum taps that cause inter-carrier interference in a received signal. The approach also involves causing an approximation of an instantaneous phase noise spectrum by a low order finite impulse response filter based on the estimated one or more phase noise spectrum taps. The approach additionally involves determining a de-convolution filter having two or more filter coefficients for one or more orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing symbols associated with the received signal. The approach further involves causing the de-convolution filter to be matched to the approximated instantaneous phase noise spectrum. The approach also involves causing the inter-carrier interference caused by phase noise to be compensated for based on a de-convolution procedure that applies the de-convolution filter to the one or more orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing symbols.