AbstractIn this article, motivated by the enhanced spatial modulation and quadrature spatial modulation (QSM) systems, we proposed a new design of double generalized spatial modulation (DGSM), which further exploits the spatial domain not only for the transmission of more extra information bits by increasing the number of antenna index (AI) vectors in an AI vector set, but also for the achievable transmit diversity gain. In DGSM system, we first design the in‐phase and quadrature AI vector sets, whose each AI vector having one or more than one nonzero element equaling to “1” is used for the activation of one or more than one transmit antenna. Then, a spatial antenna index vector (SIV) is generated by adding an AI vector from the in‐phase AI set and another AI vector from the quadrature AI set. Furthermore, a data symbol (eg, QAM/PSK) is modulated on the SIV for forming multiple versions of the data symbol and then transmitted, the maximum likelihood (ML) and sphere decoder (SD) algorithm are applied for the DGSM system. Finally, the performance analysis, including in the spectral efficiency, the computational complexity comparison between the DGSM system with SD algorithm and the diversity‐achieving QSM (DA‐QSM) with ML detector, are provided. Also, the average bit error probability is analyzed. Simulation results using Monte Carlo are presented to show the improvement of bit error ratio performance in comparison with DA‐QSM and other spatial modulation schemes.