To get the current down in the transmitter you run the IR emitters at 1A each, and as you are going to use a few of them put them in series, and use a power MOSFET to drive them, with a large value ( 1000uf low ESR) capacitor in a small area close to the emitters. Drive with very narrow pules, around 1us each, and you will have a low average current, but high peak current and thus high output. As above you need to have both the 38kHz modulation and the lower frequency modulation to get the receiver to function, so use a microcontroller to make it, or just have 2 oscillators using CMOS gates making them, and use an or gate to get the final signal. Receive wise you just are looking for lost pulses, so either a microcontroller input and it resets a timer on the edges, and if the timer overflows because of no signal you have an output, or just use the signal to drive an AC coupled emitter follower amplifier, which has as emitter load a RC that will feed a comparator, RC being such that the input being absent for 3 cycles (or more) means the comparator changes output state.