Patent ID: 7292102

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a driver having at least a pair of transistors disposed in a cascode arrangement having their gate terminals coupled together to receive a bias voltage and their source terminals coupled to receive differential driver current; and a shunt network coupled across the source terminals of the pair of cascode transistors to operate as a current divider to divert a portion of the differential driver current away from the pair of cascode transistors, in which an amount of current diverted to the shunt network operates to control gain of the driver, and in which the shunt network includes at least one shunt transistor that has its gate terminal coupled to the bias voltage to activate the at least one shunt transistor, the coupling of the gates of the pair of cascode transistors and the gate of the at least one shunt transistor to the same bias voltage cancels circuit variations of the driver that are due to effects of process, voltage and temperature.