At the rate you are taking, software synthesized serial at both ends would be very easy to code.
Ask your professor. I don't see Manchester encoding as offering anything that would be better at getting "accurate readings and inplementing fault recovery code".
That is all in your protocol design. As has been observed, your code really won't work at all. Woyncha just use an easier method?
As for "accurate readings and inplementing fault recovery code", see
HTH and say Hi to the professor for me.
a7