Radio controlled ("atomic") clocks get their signal from WWVB, a long-wave station in Colorado. Its signal is just a carrier and data is encoded via pulse-width modulation and phase modulation. People have built local, low-powered WWVB transmitters to sync their watches and so forth in areas where WWVB is hard or impossible to receive. It's not a good idea to build one of these unless you REALLy know what you're doing because radio signals can travel farther than you expect, and the FCC takes a rather dim view of intentionally broadcasting your own signal (to any distance) without a license to do so.