An apparatus and method of applying a fast algorithm to a pilot-based channel estimation process includes receiving, in a receiver, a signal comprising information bits transmitted in a wireless channel, executing a pilot-based channel estimation process running on a decision-directed turbo estimation procedure having a p structure for a vector of pilots and an upper bound N for a channel spread based on a feedback of detected information bits via OFDM, encoding the detected information bits, re-encoding the detected information bits at a decoder output, re-constructing and subtracting an ICI term from the received signal, modulating the detected information bits, estimating channel symbols in a per-carrier basis based on a diagonal matrix of a full matrix involved in the pilot-based channel estimation, and performing training of the wireless channel based on an entire vector of the channel symbols.