Spatial modulation (SM) is a spectrum and energy-efficient simple digital modulation scheme, which uses the transmitter antenna indices to convey the additional bits. The conventional SM variants have high complex receivers and offer poor performance under spatially correlated and line-of-sight (LOS) channel conditions. In this work, a new variant, modified spatial modulation (MSM) for 8 × 8 multiple input multiple output (MIMO) configuration is proposed, which uses one or two transmitter antennas based on the incoming bit patterns. The adaptive mapping used at the transmitter side for antenna selection and modified maximum likelihood (ML) detection used at the receiver side reduces the computational complexity. Every possible bit per channel use (bpcu) is mapped to a unique transmit symbol vector, which minimizes the receiver complexity, while combating the effect of spatial correlation. Through simulation results, it is observed that the average bit error rate (ABER) performance of the MSM-ML scheme is much better than that of the conventional SM-ML, generalized spatial modulation (GSM)-ML and redesigned spatial modulation (ReSM)-ML schemes under spatially correlated and LOS channel conditions. The promising results prove that the proposed scheme can be a better alternative to spatial multiplexing (SMX) in battery-driven compact handheld devices, which can be used for international mobile telecommunication-2020 (IMT-2020). © 2018, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals.