This invention discloses a method for OFDM and OFDMA channel estimation via phase-rotated polynomial interpolation and extrapolation (inter/extra-polation). For complexity reason, polynomial inter/extra-polation is an often considered method for channel estimation in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, in which the simplest choice is linear inter/extra-polation. But the performance of this method depends on the accuracy of symbol timing estimation as well as the channel delay spread. The invention mitigates the problem by adding a linear phase factor to polynomial inter/extra-polation, which corresponds to adding a delay (also called delay shift) in the time domain.