This would be a horrible way to make a product which isn't a piece of test equipment. The power consumption and manufacturing cost is orders of magnitude higher than a specific purpose device.
I maintain that the original question was valid and it’s up to the product designer to determine whether the trade offs are worth it. I mentioned it because I am designing a farming robot where a very reliable Wifi device might be worth the cost and power consumption. I don’t know if this product is “very reliable” but lots of Wifi isn’t. I’m already considering that exact software defined radio for our robot so it could actually represent cost savings if it replaced the Wifi adapter.
Moreover I disliked the tone of the reply “why would you need to know the answer to your question, just do it and no one will notice.” It was a perfectly fine question to ask and I find it unreasonable to suggest it wasn’t worth asking without getting more information from the person asking it.
Making a wifi adapter out of a software defined radio is going to be a less than ideal way to enable wifi to a product. The power consumption will be tremendously higher than a dedicated device. The cost for the electronics will be tremendously higher than a dedicated device. The cost to get an SDR which transmits certified for sale as a wifi device in every country you wish to sell it in will be expensive, especially compared to a dedicated wifi dongle which already has modular certifications.
Based on my experience, expect to pay upwards of $5k for an FCC compliance test report from a lab for a not intentionally emitting device which incorporates a certified wifi module. Expect to pay upwards of $25k for an FCC compliance test report for a device which is an intentional emitter (ie: you put an SDR inside your product as a wifi radio). If you want to sell outside of the USA, the ratio of costs is (in my experience) fairly similar for many other countries/regions of the world.
If you feel that you cannot find a reliable off the shelf pre-certified wifi module for your product, I think you would be best served to contact some lower volume wifi module vendors and to speak with them about why you feel their offerings are not reliable. They will likely be happy to help you, especially if they're competing with a multi-hundred dollar SDR for the design win.
I did give you a reasonable answer to your reasonable question: no. But this device is pretty much going to not be reliable by definition.
As for getting more complicated, and "can you in general build an SDR into an end product" it's my understanding this is not a settled question. I don't see why not, but the FCC can more or less make laws and has previously shown it does not like the fact that you can put OpenWRT on your router.
