Wireless sensor networks, by providing an unprecedented way of interacting with the physical environment, have become a hot topic for research over the last few years. As with any new technology, results from real experimentations using these networks are still scarce, as real deployments are either costly, or still unfeasible in the current state of technology. There is therefore an increasing need for simulation tools allowing the testing of different architectures, communication protocols or information processing algorithms in sensor networks. In this paper, we investigate a simulation framework for the testing of data processing in wireless sensor network applications. In a first stage, data is generated using partial differential equations, allowing the modeling of a large panel of physical phenomena. In a second stage, sensing unit operating system and network constraints are simulated using an instance of a versatile simulator to account for the platform characteristics. Insights provided by the proposed simulation frame are illustrated by a set of experiments on a heat source detection task.