  The utilization of universal frequency reuse in multi-beam satellite systems
introduces a non-negligible level of co-channel interference (CCI), which in
turn penalizes the quality of service experienced by users. Taking this as
starting point, the paper focuses on resource management performed by the
gateway (hub) on the return-link, with particular emphasis on a scheduling
algorithm based on bipartite graph approach. The study gives important insights
into the achievable per-user rate and the role played by the number of users
and spot beams considered for scheduling. More interestingly, it is shown that
a free-slot assignment strategy helps to exploit the available satellite
resources, thus guaranteeing a max-min rate requirement to users. Remarks about
the trade-off between efficiency-loss and performance increase are finally
drawn at the end of the paper.
