To eliminate the effect of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system symbol timing offset on channel estimation, a compensation algorithm was presented. The theoretical analysis shows the phase shift is calculated as the change of statistical properties and the channel estimation error is extended when the linear interpolation is used in the channel estimation. The presented algorithm compensates the channel estimation using the characteristic of subcarrier phase shift caused by symbol timing offset. The simulation results show that, in multipath fading channel, the channel estimation mean square error of the new algorithm is 25% that of normal linear interpolation algorithm when the signal to noise ratio is 20 dB and the timing position is the middle of the cyclic prefix, so the new algorithm can shorten the meansquare error of channel estimation. The experimental results show the algorithm can improve the performance of receiver.