Your IRC conversation indicates the PC also experiences intermittent issues with the Ps/2 connected Synaptic Touchpad. Hopefully that issue can be solved with some i8042.XXX kernel parameter.

If not, and combined with this issue, I would suggest a boot-time RAM test using memtest86+ (available from the GRUB boot manager menu). It is just possible that memory corruption is the root cause of both issues.

However, when the signal is lost capturing recent entries in the syslog and kern.log might be helpful here:

sudo tail -n 300 /var/log/syslog /var/log/kern.log | tee /tmp/rtl8188ee-lost-signal.log

And then attach "/tmp/rtl8188ee-lost-signal.log" to this bug report.

The issue could well be caused by some power-saving feature. The rtl8188ee kernel module has several PARaMeters that can affect power state so it might be worth doing some tests with different values. To see the parameters the module supports use the "modinfo <module-name>" command. The range of supported PARMs may differ for different versions of the Linux kernel. 

For v4.1.6 I see:

$ modinfo rtl8188ee
filename:       /lib/modules/4.1.0-3-lowlatency/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi/rtl8188ee/rtl8188ee.ko
firmware:       rtlwifi/rtl8188efw.bin
description:    Realtek 8188E 802.11n PCI wireless
license:        GPL
author:         Larry Finger	<email address hidden>
author:         Realtek WlanFAE	<email address hidden>
author:         zhiyuan_yang	<email address hidden>
srcversion:     14A7C9ABC9B1C044E6EBB43
alias:          pci:v000010ECd00008179sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
depends:        rtlwifi,rtl_pci,mac80211
intree:         Y
vermagic:       4.1.0-3-lowlatency SMP preempt mod_unload modversions 
signer:         Build time autogenerated kernel key
sig_key:        B5:F9:90:FB:D3:8C:30:BA:EA:DB:EF:46:F8:6E:90:E1:9C:A7:5B:14
sig_hashalgo:   sha512
parm:           swenc:Set to 1 for software crypto (default 0)
 (bool)
parm:           ips:Set to 0 to not use link power save (default 1)
 (bool)
parm:           swlps:Set to 1 to use SW control power save (default 0)
 (bool)
parm:           fwlps:Set to 1 to use FW control power save (default 1)
 (bool)
parm:           msi:Set to 1 to use MSI interrupts mode (default 1)
 (bool)
parm:           debug:Set debug level (0-5) (default 0) (int)
parm:           disable_watchdog:Set to 1 to disable the watchdog (default 0)
 (bool)

In order of preference I'd try "ips=0" then "fwlps=0" since both default to enabling power-save features.

It is best to test these options manually before adding them to the system configuration. This can be done by disabling the Wireless Networking then in a terminal unloading the module and re-loading it with the parameter, e.g:

sudo modprobe --remove rtl8188ee

sudo modprobe rtl8188ee ips=0

Re-enable Wireless Networking and test. If the failure still occurs repeat the process with another param. Multiple params can be added to the modprobe options separated by spaces, e.g.

sudo modprobe rtl8188ee ips=0 fwlps=0


You can check the module has loaded correctly with:

sudo tail  /var/log/kern.log


If none of these tests offer improvements with the Ubuntu kernel versions then testing with the latest v4.2 mainline kernel from the Kernel Team's PPA would be the next step.