Abstract: Two channel estimation methods based on discrete cosine transform (DCT) were proposed for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems in multi-path fading channel. Due to the energy compaction properties of DCT, spectral leakage of conventional discrete-time Fourier transform (DFT)-based estimation could be mitigated when the path delays aren’t integer multiples of sampling period, or when not all sub-carriers are used. According to the equivalent relationship between DCT and DFT, two corresponding DCT-based channel estimators were obtained by defining the different symmetric data sequences. Of two DCT-based methods, one has a better performance, while the other has the advantage of easy realization. Theoretical analysis and computer simulation results show that both proposed algorithms can reduce the channel estimation error, caused by the spectral leakage, and outperform the conventional DFT-based channel estimation in multi-path fading channel.