High directivity and large bandwidth directional couplers are foreseen in future electronic systems. These devices are expected in measurement, monitoring, control and protection applications. In this work, a novel design methodology of a directional coupler using microstrip technology is proposed. This design is based on traditional coupled line theory enhanced with capacitive compensation and matching network. Using this methodology, a directional coupler is implemented in microstrip technology using FR4 substrate obtaining a large bandwidth (ranging from 1 GHz to 8 GHz) and a directivity better than 20 dB.