This paper presents the performance of DSTBC when applied on the downlink transmission of WCDMA cellular systems in fast-varying time-dispersive channels. First, three DSTBC-WCDMA receiver architectures are proposed and they are: (1) the DSTBC Rake receiver for combined-code (D-Rake-C), (2) the DSTBC deterministic receiver for combined-code (D-Det-C), and (3) the DSTBC deterministic de-prefix receiver for combined-code (D-Det-DP-C). Detection can be divided into a correlator that combines descrambling and despreading, and a DSTBC decoder. The correlator is designed to perform signal separation of the multipath-multiuser signal via least-square (LS) estimation. To enable the correlator to perform signal separation at every block period, the long combined spreading and scrambling codes are divided into shorter codes. Then, the proposed receivers are theoretically analyzed in time-dispersive channels and multiple-user environment using the moment generating function (MGF) of fading distributions. For analyzing interference tolerance, the standard Gaussian approximation is employed. Finally, simulations are performed. Theoretical performance well matches simulated results. Among the three receivers, the D-Det-DP-C receiver has the best performance in time-dispersive channels with a maximum excess delay of 4 chips and a maximum Doppler frequency of 250 Hz. Results also show minimal performance degradation for fast fading channels with a maximum Doppler frequency of 1200 Hz. The best performance is obtained when the receiver has the information on the maximum excess delay and all users' spreading codes.