  We introduce a general approach to characterize composite fading models based
on inverse gamma (IG) shadowing. We first determine to what extent the IG
distribution is an adequate choice for modeling shadow fading, by means of a
comprehensive test with field measurements and other distributions
conventionally used for this purpose. Then, we prove that the probability
density function and cumulative distribution function of any IG-based composite
fading model are directly expressed in terms of a Laplace-domain statistic of
the underlying fast fading model and, in some relevant cases, as a mixture of
wellknown state-of-the-art distributions. Also, exact and asymptotic
expressions for the outage probability are provided, which are valid for any
choice of baseline fading distribution. Finally, we exemplify our approach by
presenting several application examples for IG-based composite fading models,
for which their statistical characterization is directly obtained in a simple
form.
