Frequency offset in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is known to cause the inter-channel interference (ICI), amplitude and phase distortion of a received signal, resulting in a severe performance degradation of the total system. In this paper, we propose an improved pilot-based masimum likelihood frequency offset estimation technique, which uses the predefined sync-subchannels, and derive the error performance of the proposed frequency offset estimator analytically. The proposed technique improves the performance of the frequency offset estimator by adding up the frequency offset caused by coherent phase changes and averaging out the effect caused by random phase error. It is confirmed by computer simulations that the upper bound of error variance for the proposed frequency offset estimator analytically derived in this paper is correct, and that the proposed estimator has better performance than the previous ones in terms of error variance, tracking range, and time-varying characteristics of a channel.