In recent years, there has been an increased number of people that are engaged in gaming - a phenomenon connected to constantly developing internet infrastructure and a growing middleclass. The phenomenon of Cloud gaming has received increasing attention since it was introduced some years ago; in 2022 all Cloud gaming services combined had 31,7 million paying users. The number that is estimated to triple by 2025. Given this information, we proceeded to identify a gap in previous literature within the topic of Cloud gaming. Previous research within the topic of Cloud gaming has predominantly discussed Cloud gaming as a business model rather than focusing on consumers. We sought to seize the opportunity to fill this research gap by studying consumers' motivations to engage in this new technology and examine which factors can influence the customer's decision-making process in the path to purchase. We also wanted this study to contribute to marketing practice by examining important current research priorities within the field of marketing. In order to investigate our research purposes, we adopted an exploratory qualitative study where we, with the help of online focus groups, investigated the customers' perceptions of Cloud gaming as a service and their motivations to engage in it. Another purpose of this study was to find out how the gaming industry may be affected by the increased usage of cloud gaming, therefore we wanted to conduct a semi-structured interview with an industry representative. The most interesting result of this study indicates that a somewhat odd situation arises for the Cloud gaming companies where the respondents who spent the least amount of money and engage the least in traditional gaming, showed the greatest motivation to engage in Cloud gaming. Therefore we suggest that there are a number of different measures that must be kept in mind by marketers within the industry.

Les gaz d'atomes ultrafroids offrent des possibilités sans précédent pour la réalisation et la manipulation des systèmes quantiques. Le contrôle exercé sur les interactions entre particules permet d'atteindre le régime de fortes interactions, pour des espèces d'atomes à la fois fermioniques et bosoniques. Dans la limite unitaire, où la force d'interaction est à son maximum, des propriétés universelles émergent. Pour les atomes bosoniques, celles-ci comprennent l'effet Efimov, l'existance surprenante d'une séquence infinie d'états liés à trois corps. Dans cette thèse, nous avons étudiés un système de bosons unitaires. Partant des cas à deux et à trois corps, nous avons montrés que le modèle choisi capturait correctement les caractéristiques universelles de l'effet Efimov. Pour le modèle à N-corps, nous avons développé un algorithme de Monte Carlo quantique capable de réaliser les différentes phases thermodynamiques du système : gaz normal à haute-température, condensat de Bose-Einstein, et liquide d'Efimov. Un unique composant de notre modèle resterait pertinent à la limite de température infinie, à savoir la répulsion corps dur à trois corps, qui constitue une généralisation du potentiel classique entre sphères dures. Pour ce modèle, nous avons proposé une solution au problème d'empilement compact en deux et trois dimensions, fondée sur une Ansatz analytique et sur la technique de recuit simulé. En étendant ces résultats à une situation de pression finie, nous avons montré que le système présente une transition de fusion discontinue, que nous avons identifié à travers la méthode de Monte Carlo. / Ultracold atomic gases offer unprecedented possibilities to realize and manipulate quantum systems. The control on interparticle interactions allows to reach the strongly-interacting regime, with both fermionic and bosonic atomic species. In the unitary limit, where the interaction strength is at its maximum, universal properties emerge. For bosonic atoms, these include the Efimov effect, the surprising existence of an infinite sequence of three-body bound states. In this thesis, we have studied a system of unitary bosons. Starting from the two- and three-body cases, we have shown that the chosen model correctly captures the universal features of the Efimov effect. For the corresponding many-body problem, we have developed a quantum Monte Carlo algorithm capable of realizing the different thermodynamic phases in which the system may exist: The high-temperature normal gas, Bose-Einstein condensate, and Efimov liquid. A single ingredient of our model would remain relevant in the infinite-temperature limit, namely the three-body hard-core repulsion, which constitutes a generalization of the classical hard-sphere potential. For this model, we have proposed a solution to the two- and three-dimensional packing problem, based on an analytical ansatz and on the simulated-annealing technique. Extending these results to finite pressure showed that the system has a discontinuous melting transition, which we identified through the Monte Carlo method.

This is an ethnographic description and investigation of life on a Scottish council estate. It is based on five unemployed one-parent life histories focusing on their experiences, knowledge and emotions in and around a local community centre. The study's expressed focal point is the Gentleman Robber community centre, within the hardtown community in the city of Dundee. The study touches on locally important representations and key issues such as: work, morality, boredom, kinship, spatiality and violence. At the tables in the community centre, the local narrative montage often focused on the enjoyment of violence or the negative marginal stigmatism faced, while, for example, collecting one's social benefits or attending the local doctor. It reflected a dichotomy of Us/Them relations linked to a local fragmentation of identity and issues of deservingness. I found that in a daily emphasis of their own exclusion the Hardtowners often voiced a feeling and embodiment of opposition through local story telling. It is a fragmented and stressful everyday life, with individual skill and network connections deciding individual status in the community. Links and networks last for as long as they are deemed useful and flexibility in trading, cooperation, networking and violence is one of the local guiding lights for success. The ethnographic narrative is described though a fragmented, contextually faithful discourse, with cinematic influences. This imparts a slice of daily experientialism found in the fragmented and stressful lives of the individuals born into and living on benefit in a Western European welfare society.

Syfte - Trots att kriser sägs vara vardagliga händelser saknas en tydlig definition avkrisbegreppet och kategorisering av de olika kristyper. Vi har identifierat två dimensioner,den externa och interna. Den externa dimensionen med fokus på hårda kriser har domineratområdet krisforskning. Således är hantering av interna och mjuka kriser ett outforskatområde. Syftet med denna studie är att bidra till förståelsen för hur svenska myndigheterarbetar med hanteringen av mjuka kriser.Metod - Denna studie tar sin grund i en kvalitativ metodansats där datainsamlingengenomfördes genom fem semistrukturerade intervjuer.Resultat - Fenomenet mjuka kriser är svårt att undersöka då detta är svårt att definiera ochfaller inom HR´s ansvarsområdet. Den traditionella krisforskningen med fokus på hårdakriser saknar kunskap kring hantering av interna mjuka kriser. Trots det visar resultaten attprecis som med hårda kriser, kan mjuka kriser studeras utifrån samtliga krisfaser. Merforskning kring fenomenet är således önskvärd.Bidrag - Denna studie skapar ett större förståelse kring definitionen av mjuka kriser samtskapar medvetenhet kring olika mjuka aspekter som skiljer sig från de externa /fysiska / hårdakriserna. Studien belyser problematiken kring olika aspekter inom mjuk krishantering ochsåledes är problematiseringen av mjuka kriser ett bidrag. Denna studie är även användbar förorganisationer som har ambitionen att inkludera hantering av mjuka kriser i sin krishantering. / Purpose - Although crises are said to be everyday events, there is no clear definition of theconcept of crisis and categorization of different types of crisis. We have identified twodimensions, the external and the internal. The external dimension with a focus on hard-corecrises has dominated the area of crisis research. Thus, dealing with internal and soft-corecrises is an unexplored area. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding ofhow Swedish authorities work with the management of soft crises.Methodology - This study is based on a qualitative method approach where data collectionwas carried out through five semi-structured interviews.Results - The phenomenon of soft crises is difficult to investigate as the concept is fairly newand difficult to define, and falls within the responsibility of HR instead of crisis management.Traditional crisis research with a focus on hard-core crises lacks knowledge about handlinginternal soft crises. Nevertheless, the results show that just as with hard-core crises, soft-corecrises can be studied based on all crisis phases. More research on the phenomenon is thusdesirable.Contribution - This study contributes to the understanding of the definition of soft-corecrises and creates awareness of different soft aspects that differ from the external / physical /hard crises. The study sheds light on the problems surrounding various aspects of soft-corecrisis management and thus is the problematization of soft-core crises a contribution. Thisstudy is also useful for organizations that have the ambition to include the management ofsoft-core crises in their crisis management.

Owing to its ability to improve both spectral and energy efficiency of wireless networks, massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) has become one of the key enablers of the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond communication systems. For successful integration of this promising physical layer technique in the upcoming cellular standards, it is essential to have a comprehensive understanding of its network-level performance. Over the last decade, stochastic geometry has been instrumental in obtaining useful system design insights of wireless networks through accurate and tractable theoretical analysis. Hence, it is only natural to consider modeling and analyzing the mMIMO systems using appropriate statistical constructs from the stochastic geometry literature and gain insights for its future implementation. With this broader objective in mind, we first focus on modeling a cellular mMIMO network that uses fractional pilot reuse to mitigate the sole performance-limiting factor of mMIMO networks, namely, pilot contamination. Leveraging constructs from the stochastic geometry literature, such as Johnson-Mehl cells, we derive analytical expressions for the uplink (UL) signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) coverage probability and average spectral efficiency for a random user. From our system analysis, we present a partitioning rule for the number of pilot sequences to be reserved for the cell-center and cell-edge users that improves the average cell-edge user spectral efficiency while achieving similar cell-center user spectral efficiency with respect to unity pilot reuse. In addition, using the analytical approach developed for the cell-center user performance evaluation, we study the performance of a small cell system where user and base station (BS) locations are coupled. The impact of distance-dependent UL power control on the performance of an mMIMO network with unity pilot reuse is analyzed and subsequent system design guidelines are also presented. Next, we focus on the performance analysis of the cell-free mMIMO network, which is a distributed implementation of the mMIMO system that leads to the second and third contributions of this dissertation. Similar to the cellular counterpart, the cell-free systems also suffer from pilot contamination due to the reuse of pilot sequences throughout the network. Inspired by a hardcore point process known as the random sequential adsorption (RSA) process, we develop a new distributed pilot assignment algorithm that mitigates the effect of pilot contamination by ensuring a minimum distance among the co-pilot users. This pilot assignment scheme leads to the construction of a new point process, namely the multilayer RSA process. We study the statistical properties of this point process both in one and two-dimensional spaces by deriving approximate but accurate expressions for the density and pair correlation functions. Leveraging these new results, for a cell-free network with the proposed RSA-based pilot assignment scheme, we present an analytical approach that determines the minimum number of pilots required to schedule a user with probabilistic guarantees. In addition, to benchmark the performance of the RSA-based scheme, we propose two optimization-based centralized pilot allocation schemes using linear programming principles. Through extensive numerical simulations, we validate the efficacy of the distributed and scalable RSA-based pilot assignment scheme compared to the proposed centralized algorithms. Apart from pilot contamination, another impediment to the performance of a cell-free mMIMO is limited fronthaul capacity between the baseband unit and the access points (APs). In our fourth contribution, using appropriate stochastic geometry-based tools, we model and analyze the downlink of such a network for two different implementation scenarios. In the first scenario, we consider a finite network where each AP serves all the users in the network. In the second scenario, we consider an infinite network where each user is served by a few nearby APs in order to limit the load on fronthaul links. From our analyses, we observe that for the finite network, the achievable average system sum-rate is a strictly quasi-concave function of the number of users in the network, which serves as a key guideline for scheduler design for such systems. Further, for the user-centric architecture, we observe that there exists an optimal number of serving APs that maximizes the average user rate. The fifth and final contribution of this dissertation focuses on the potential improvement that is possible by the use of mMIMO in citizen broadband radio service (CBRS) spectrum sharing systems. As a first concrete step, we present comprehensive modeling and analysis of this system with omni-directional transmissions. Our model takes into account the key guidelines by the Federal Communications Commission for co-existence between licensed and unlicensed networks in the 3.5 GHz CBRS frequency band. Leveraging the properties of the Poisson hole process and Matern hardcore point process of type II, a.k.a. ghost RSA process, we analytically characterize the impact of different system parameters on various performance metrics such as medium access probability, coverage probability, and area spectral efficiency. Further, we provide useful system design guidelines for successful co-existence between these networks. Building upon this omni-directional model, we also characterize the performance benefits of using mMIMO in such a spectrum sharing network. / Doctor of Philosophy / The emergence of cloud-based video and audio streaming services, online gaming platforms, instantaneous sharing of multimedia contents (e.g., photos, videos) through social networking platforms, and virtual collaborative workspace/meetings require the cellular communication networks to provide high data-rate as well as reliable and ubiquitous connectivity. These constantly evolving requirements can be met by designing a wireless network that harmoniously exploits the symbiotic co-existence among different types of cutting-edge wireless technologies. One such technology is massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO), whose core idea is to equip the cellular base stations (BSs) with a large number of antennas that can be leveraged through appropriate signal processing algorithms to simultaneously accommodate multiple users with reduced network interference. For successful deployment of mMIMO in the upcoming cellular standards, i.e., fifth-generation (5G) and beyond systems, it is necessary to characterize its performance in a large-scale wireless network taking into account the inherent spatial randomness in the BS and user locations. To achieve this goal, in this dissertation, we propose different statistical methods for the performance analysis of mMIMO networks using tools from stochastic geometry, which is a field of mathematics related to the study of random patterns of points. One of the major deployment issues of mMIMO systems is pilot contamination, which is a form of coherent network interference that degrades user performance. The main reason behind pilot contamination is the reuse of pilot sequences, which are a finite number of known signal waveforms used for channel estimation between a user and its serving BS. Further, the effect of pilot contamination is more severe for the cell-edge users, which are farther from their own BSs. An efficient scheme to mitigate the effect of pilot contamination is fractional pilot reuse (FPR). However, the efficiency of this scheme depends on the pilot partitioning rule that decides the fraction of total pilot sequences that should be used by the cell-edge users. Using appropriate statistical constructs from the stochastic geometry literature, such as Johnson-Mehl cells, we present a partitioning rule for efficient implementation of the FPR scheme in a cellular mMIMO network. Next, we focus on the performance analysis of the cell-free mMIMO network. In contrast to the cellular network, where each user is served by a single BS, in a cell-free network each user can be served by multiple access points (APs), which have less complex hardware compared to a BS. Owing to this cooperative and distributed implementation, there are no cell-edge users. Similar to the cellular counterpart, the cell-free systems also suffer from pilot contamination due to the reuse of pilot sequences throughout the network. Inspired by a hardcore point process known as the random sequential adsorption (RSA) process, we develop a new distributed pilot assignment algorithm that mitigates the effect of pilot contamination by ensuring a minimum distance among the co-pilot users. Further, we show that the performance of this distributed pilot assignment scheme is appreciable compared to different centralized pilot assignment schemes, which are algorithmically more complex and difficult to implement in a network. Moreover, this pilot assignment scheme leads to the construction of a new point process, namely the multilayer RSA process. We derive the statistical properties of this point process both in one and two-dimensional spaces. Further, in a cell-free mMIMO network, the APs are connected to a centralized baseband unit (BBU) that performs the bulk of the signal processing operations through finite capacity links, such as fiber optic cables. Apart from pilot contamination, another implementational issue associated with the cell-free mMIMO systems is the finite capacity of fronthaul links that results in user performance degradation. Using appropriate stochastic geometry-based tools, we model and analyze this network for two different implementation scenarios. In the first scenario, we consider a finite network where each AP serves all the users in the network. In the second scenario, we consider an infinite network where each user is served by a few nearby APs. As a consequence of this user-centric implementation, for each user, the BBU only needs to communicate with fewer APs thereby reducing information load on fronthaul links. From our analyses, we propose key guidelines for the deployment of both types of scenarios. The type of mMIMO systems that are discussed in this work will be operated in the sub-6 GHz frequency range of the electromagnetic spectrum. Owing to the limited availability of spectrum resources, usually, spectrum sharing is encouraged among different cellular operators in such bands. One such example is the citizen broadband radio service (CBRS) spectrum sharing systems proposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The final contribution of this dissertation focuses on the potential improvement that is possible by the use of mMIMO in the CBRS systems. As our first step, using tools from stochastic geometry, we model and analyze this system with a single antenna at the BSs. In our model, we take into account the key guidelines by the FCC for co-existence between licensed and unlicensed operators. Leveraging properties of the Poisson hole process and hardcore process, we provide useful theoretical expressions for different performance metrics such as medium access probability, coverage probability, and area spectral efficiency. These results are used to obtain system design guidelines for successful co-existence between these networks. We further highlight the potential improvement in the user performance with multiple antennas at the unlicensed BS.