Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an effective technique for the future 3G communications because of its great immunity to impulse noise and intersymbol interference. The channel estimation is a crucial aspect in the design of OFDM systems. In this work, we propose a channel estimation algorithm based on a time-frequency polynomial model of the fading multipath channels. The algorithm exploits the correlation of the channel responses in both time and frequency domains and hence reduce more noise than the methods using only time or frequency polynomial model. The estimator is also more robust compared to the existing methods based on Fourier transform. The simulation shows that it has more than 5   dB improvement in terms of mean-squared estimation error under some practical channel conditions. The algorithm needs little prior knowledge about the delay and fading properties of the channel. The algorithm can be implemented recursively and can adjust itself to follow the variation of the channel statistics.