Optical spatial modulation (OSM), a recent optical multiple-input multiple-output transmission scheme in wireless optical communication, has aroused great research interests. OSM scheme requires accurate channel state information (CSI) during transmitter and receiver sides, but it is difficult to accurately estimate CSI in OSM scheme. Therefore, a scheme named differential optical spatial modulation scheme with pulse position modulation (DOSM-PPM) based on the space-time mapping block of orthogonal design is proposed in order to completely avoid CSI estimation. The bit error rate (BER) performance of DOSM-PPM is analyzed under log-normal turbulent channel model and simulated using Monte Carlo method. The results show that the transmission rate of DOSM-PPM is improved effectively. Meantime, the proposed DOSM-PPM scheme outperforms DOSM scheme with spatial pulse amplitude modulation by 1 dB at 1 × 10 - 3 BER with the same spectrum efficiency. © 2020 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).